


Contract

by srkya



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Assassination Plot(s), Corrin is Chaotic Dumbass, Crack Treated Seriously, Developing Friendships, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Family, Gender-Neutral My Unit | Kamui | Corrin, Humor, M/M, demon!Takumi, mild crack
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24099937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/srkya/pseuds/srkya
Summary: Leo decides to take things into his own hands and summon a demon to help him kill Garon. Said demon decides that pretending to be his boyfriend is the correct way to go about it.Leo's siblings are extremely amused. Leo is very much not amused.
Relationships: Leon | Leo/Takumi
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30





	1. What's worse than unwillingly obtaining a boyfriend? Immediately trying to introduce them to your family.

Ignoring the flickering shadows in the room lit only by red candles, Leo double-checked the runes he had drawn onto the floor with his own blood. He had tried to summon something powerful enough to challenge the king, but what sat in front of him, looking extremely grumpy, was a grey-haired man(he was pretty sure it was a man?) about his age, wearing dark blue sleeping robes with a red sash.

“You-” he began weakly, “you’re the Demon of Retribution?”

Said demon gave him a massive stink eye.

“You’re the one who wrote the damn summoning spiral. What, can’t actually read? I got dragged outta bed for this.”

Leo was at a loss for words but immediately withdrew in alarm when the demon slowly stood up and approached the edge of the inner ring. The containment circle, the only thing preventing a higher demon from just outright killing him to go back to sleep. He cocked his head, peering at the lines on the floor with his unmistakably demonic red eyes and leaned forward until the lines were sparking erratically from the stress. 

“Alright,” the demon said lazily, “What d’you want me for? I’m listening.”

“I need you to kill Father.”

“Typical,” the demon sighed, “Why is this person so special that you would summon a demon to do it, then? It’s pretty extreme. Just slice his head off or something, I don’t know.”

“You think people haven’t tried?” Leo scoffed, “It’s not that easy to kill him, no matter how much people despise him.”

“Your father...has had people trying to kill him already?”

“He’s the King of Nohr.”

With a loud crack, the demon sliced straight through the circle with some sort of weapon that dematerialized as soon as he was done and he stalked forward until he was face to face with Leo, who was definitely not freaking out.

Camilla always said that his interest in magic was going to be the death of him, but he wouldn’t go down without a fight. He tried to raise his ritual knife, covered in his own blood, in some sort of defense.

The demon snorted, “I know you want to try stabbing me, but please use something other than that sharpened fruit knife. I’ll feel bad for you otherwise.”

Hey, the only requirements for a ritual knife were something that could reliably draw blood, alright? Yeah, he could buy those fancy dark, creepy ritual knives, but then he’d probably be ordered to summon Faceless at all times of the day. A collection of extra sharp fruit knives was a lot easier to explain away than a collection of edgy ritual blades. They were also useful when he needed to cut his tomatoes, but that wasn’t important at the moment.

Leo tried to convey this information to the pretty, uh, pretty murderous demon with a scowl of his own. 

“Fine,” the demon sighed, “Sakura is going to yell at me later for this.”

“You’re going to help-wait, what payment do you even want?”

“I think I know who you’re talking about- and I  _ really _ want to kill that guy anyway, so it’s fine.”

The demon then started inspecting his apartment as if his collection of plants and books was extremely interesting.

“You're kind of terrible at being a demon, aren’t you?” Leo said, completely baffled.

“No, you’re just really not that threatening. It would be like taking candy from a baby, which is what Kamui would totally do, and I’m not going to stoop to their level. Anyways, where’s a bed? It’s ass o-clock in the morning. Why are you summoning things instead of sleeping?”

“I have a meeting in an hour,” Leo said mulishly, “Also, what exactly are you planning? I need to know so I can plan around it. Don’t just run up to him and stab him, alright?”

The demon let out a massive yawn and looked at Leo with half-lidded eyes. “That guy has a ton of demons working for him, so I have to either get close enough to him where I can just snipe him without dying in the process or you can spend the rest of your week summoning my entire extended family and you can throw a coup or something. Though maybe give it more than a week… you’ll probably die of blood loss. And Kamui will probably kill you and eat you because they’re evil and have no standards.”

With that, the Demon of Retribution stomped out of the room and crashed on the closest piece of furniture, the couch, like some sort of sulking cat. 

Leo had gotten way over his head with this, hadn’t he? He stared at the summoning circle on the floor trying to dissect it, to see where he went wrong and what the consequences were, but other than the chalk lines overloading with energy. There was no mistake, and that was the most frustrating part of it all, that twisted his insides until he scrubbed the floor clean again.

* * *

“So,” the demon said, staring at Leo with his head resting on his palm, “What’s that?”

Leo looked up from his breakfast. 

“It’s food. Wait- Is that my shirt?”

It was unmistakably his shirt and his pants. They were a bit too long on the demon and even though it suited him, it looked strange. 

“Can’t you materialize clothes or something?”

The demon smirked and waved a hand, “I won’t blend in with people as well, then. Though I think you dress more preppy than the majority of the population.” 

Leo looked at him warily, “Why do you need to blend in? You have red eyes. No one has red eyes.” 

Okay, he himself had reddish eyes but they were more of a dark brown... probably.

“So! Do you have a boyfriend?” the demon said out of nowhere, completely ignoring his question. Or maybe it was the answer to his question?

“What? No, but why?”

“Great. I’m your new, old boyfriend. Introduce me to your father.”

“Are you serious.”

“You got a problem with that? It’s a good plan.”

“That’s- I’m sorry, are you insane? Do you need to lie down? How many fingers am I holding up right now _? _ ”

The thought of dating a demon was so far from his mind that he could say that he’d literally never thought of it before.

What the bloody hell was this guy talking about???

He pinched himself really, really hard but didn’t wake up.

“What, have a problem with me being a demon?” the demon said, creepily accurate.

Leo eyed the demonic being suspiciously. It couldn’t read minds, right? The description of the Demon of Retribution really didn’t say anything about that. Then again, that manuscript was several hundred years old and he could only read it over many painful hours of squinting at it and trying to untangle the garbled language.

“Anyways, call me Takumi,” the demon said, leaning over the counter to steal a piece of toast and eat it aggressively. While making almost offensive eye contact. Whatever this demon was, it seemed to hate him on sight. 

Takumi made a disgruntled face at the remaining toast after he finished eating it. 

“You guys eat this willingly? It’s gross.”

“Aren’t you a demon? Why would a demon eat toast? You even finished it for some reason.”

“It’s rude to not finish the food.” And Takumi started pouting again. It was almost cute? In a terrifying way. Because even though he had a soft-looking face, his eyes were unsettlingly demon-bright and were impossible to ignore.

“Don’t demons above a certain level eat souls or drink blood?” Leo asked. The lesser summons, the common, everyday ones only required magic power as fuel. The stronger ones only required blood because it was a better conduit for transferring mana over. Demons that required souls- well, no one had ever lived to write the results of such an exchange, so there was barely any literature about it. Leo himself hadn’t really planned on surviving it if it meant that his goals would be accomplished.

Leo sighed and cleaned up his plate before pulling on his blazer and doing up his tie. Looking back at the partially dressed demon, resigned, he asked politely, “You’re coming too, right? You need help with the tie or anything?”

The demon looked at the tie around Leo’s neck, wrapped his hand around his own neck, and made a face. It seemed like he didn’t want to, but his family meeting was formal dress only. Picking a grey tie similar enough to the color of Takumi’s hair, he tied it loosely around his own neck before approaching the demon with it. Cautious, he steeled his nerves and placed it over Takumi’s irate face, which was staring up at him and far, far too close. He backed off with a muttered excuse of finding his bag as the demon yanked his long ponytail out of the tie and fastened it around his own neck.

“Your family is far too stuffy,” he grouched, “Even if one of them is a king.”

Leo made his way to the garage with his entourage of one grumpy demon who wouldn’t stop staring at things as if they personally offended him. 

“What’s that?” he asked as soon as they got to the car.

“What?”

“The...metal thing with wheels.”

“A car?”

“What’s a car.”

Leo looked at Takumi but the demon just looked curious.

“Have you not seen one before?”

Takumi’s neutral face quickly turned into a defensive frown again.

“You think people summon me to walk around outside? Why would I know what a car looks like?”

“Wait… what do people summon you for, usually, then?” 

“To kill people. What do you think retribution means, huh?”

“So you don’t walk to where your target is, or something?”

“No, I eat the person’s soul to rip a hole to the target to eat their soul. Simple.”

“Wouldn’t you get more souls if you just walked to the soul to eat the soul then?”

Takumi just stared at him as if he was an idiot.

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“How, then?”

Takumi twisted his face up.

“To go to the Summoner, you need the summoner’s magic. To go somewhere on behalf of the Summoner, you need the summoner’s magic. Their soul just ends up helping accomplish that faster, since it’s what the soul sacrificed itself to do. And I still get to eat it. It’s about... The intent, I think.”

“Ah…” Leo still didn’t really get it but, okay.

Leo opened the door to get into the driver’s seat, half to exit the strange conversation about eating souls- which might be his fate- and half to stop standing awkwardly in the garage. 

No luck. Takumi just stood in front of the opened door and Leo felt even more awkward as the only one sitting.

“Takumi… you need to get on the other side,” Leo said, feeling his face turn red. 

“Oh.”

In awkward silence, Leo drove to the palace grounds, since he used his apartment in the city to conduct his more suspicious rituals. Those tended to steep the room in magical debris that made it unpleasant for most other people, so people involved in magical research tended to have work-study apartments like his that really worked more like an actual home (since said researchers tended to be so absorbed in their experiments that they didn’t leave for days…) 

The guards at the gate were immediately suspicious of Takumi, who was walking behind Leo and staring at everything after complaining about how ugly car parks were and approached to get his identification for clearance. But, did demons have Id? Ah, there was always something he didn’t consider enough.

Takumi, without even a hint of nerves, pulled out a passport from god knows where and handed it over to the guards. Leo just stared at it in bewilderment as the guard flipped through it and took a photocopy of it with his scanner before handing it back.

“You.. can I see that?” Leo said, reaching for it. Takumi let it go with an amused smirk on his face.

“Why? Unfortunately for you, it’s a decent picture of me.”

Indeed, it was a standard passport of one ‘Takumi’. Leo couldn’t decide if he was disappointed.

“...you’re twenty?” Somehow, he didn’t really look twenty, “Wait, how do you even know what passports are?”

“More like two hundred, I think, but I lost track. Not really conscious for a lot of it,” Takumi replied almost offhandedly, distracted by the dancing lights, the overly gilt and delicate furniture, the tapestries, the suspiciously shifting shadows - many people even toured within the outer castle walls, though what they saw was definitely the fancier parts not geared toward defense, at least back in the day. “And the guard was thinking about a passport, so I just gave him one..”

Takumi took the passport back from Leo once they were out of sight of any guards, and gave back one of his research notebooks from his apartment.

“Wait-you-”

“Maagic,” the demon said, amused, “a notebook is good enough to trick people into believing I have a lot of things.”

They finally arrived in the small lounging room where they held their weekly ‘family meetings’ happened, though it was more a waiting room for their Father’s throne room. It was a middling sized room, compared to the rest of the castle, and was predominantly occupied by couches and coffee tables and bookshelves, the same level of extravagance as the rest of the castle but more sturdy for actual use. Most of the family was already there.

“Leo!,” Elise, in flouncy black skirts, immediately tackled Leo on sight, nearly bowling him over.

“H-hey, Elise-oof!” Leo felt the breath squeezed out of him as she tightened her hug painfully.

“And who’s your friend?” Camilla said, permanently amused as always and in her military officer uniform. He really didn’t think unbuttoning her shirt so low was really up to code, but-

“I’m his boyfriend. I wanted to come,” Takumi said, blinking slowly even as he grabbed Leo’s wrist so that Leo couldn’t try to hide behind Elise or sink into the floor. The wall. So he decided to partially hide his face by planting it behind the demon’s shoulder.

Now everyone in the room was staring at Takumi, and he just knew that they were measuring up the demon-like some sort of butcher eyeing a dead lamb. This was such a bad idea. Luckily, Takumi introduced himself normally and rather formally for a demon, but that was beside the point. Camilla had started grinning like a shark about to get its prey.

“My,” Camilla said slowly, a smile creeping onto her face, “Our little cute younger brother has finally brought home someone? I thought this day would never come. He’s terribly shy, you know.”

Elise, the purest and most upbeat person he knew, gave Takumi a suspicious glare.

“If you mess with Leo,” she said, trying to glare at him but ending up with a pouting face, “I’ll hit you. With a pointy staff. And be very Upset.”

The demon obviously had no clue how to deal with Elise, the most innocent looking person in the room, threatening him so vaguely.

Luckily, Corrin chose that moment to burst into the room, and Elise promptly tackled them into a hug. Corrin smiled broadly and glanced up, only to freeze at the sight of Takumi as well for a split second before greeting everyone. 

“Hey guys! The King is in a council meeting that I know about because I got kicked out of the council room. So, our ‘getting yelled at for being a waste of space' time is definitely canceled! Unless you want me to reenact it. I’m pretty good at backhanded compliments?”

“Corrin,” Xander sighed, sounding exactly like an old man, “You shouldn’t say such things. What have I told you about manners?”

“Hm, I can’t remember, you’ve only told me... say, a billion times.” Corrin swung Elise around to her delight and dropped her on a couch before collapsing right next to her. 

“Anyways, who’s the old man?” they said, blinking innocently at Takumi, “Is it another psycho that Xander thought was hot?”

Xander sputtered and Leo, sweating, shook his head, “No, he’s my boyfriend.”

Corrin looked at Takumi and then doubled over laughing. Leo thought that his face might burst into fire and decided to look at the very interesting books lining the walls instead.

Takumi patted his back in a gesture of solidarity, before addressing Corrin.

“...Corrin, right? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Corrin narrowed their eyes at him and smiled, “Can’t say the same about you, huh?” 

“Well, I’m sure everyone has things that they hide from their family, don’t they, Corrin.”

Takumi dragged Leo to the couches and sat down at the edge as if he and Corrin hadn’t just been doing the equivalent of a backhanded stabbing match and promptly started a staring contest. With their reddish-brown, unblinking eyes. 

“The King and his advisors are likely talking about Ylisse and their recent rebellion against his new policies,” Camilla said with an affirmative nod from Xander, “Leo, you might be sent out as the leading magician for that, so be prepared. Don’t hold back like you usually do.”

“You expect it to end with bloodshed?” Corrin was suddenly paying a lot of attention to Camilia, with a frown on their face, almost disappointed.

“Father wishes to resolve it quickly,” Xander replied solemn, “The people killed during this will ultimately be replaced easily-”

“You can’t possibly think that lives are so simply thrown away,” Corrin said vehemently, “If Leo is going, I want to as well.”

“Don’t act so childish,” Xander scolded, “Politics is not some game where everyone is content and happy all the time. You’d best remember that.”

“Then isn’t accompanying Leo a good learning opportunity?” Corrin replied, suddenly earnest, “You guys all shelter me too much. Shouldn’t I go out and gain some experience?”

Xander and Camilla exchanged looks, and Leo absolutely knew that they were somehow communicating even if they didn’t so much as move a facial muscle. 

“Alright,” Camilla finally said, “but you have to bring your retainers.”

Corrin sheepishly stuck out their tongue and said, “I, uh, lost them? Whoops. I’ll fetch them later. Anyways- Leo’s retainers aren’t here at all! What’s he going to do?”

Takumi sighed with a lot of feeling. 

“They’ll be back from ‘vacation’ in a few days or so,” Leo replied, “but I can mostly protect myself anyways.”

“You mean those boring, boring missions that no one wants to do?” Elise sighed, “What did they do?”

“Loud.”

Takumi had a weird look on his face, “You should have just hired me as your retainer. No one would have thought anything of it. I guess it’s too late-”

“Are you into the master-retainer dynamic, or something?” Corrin said, with an immediate look of regret on their face, “No, wait, don’t tell me. I don’t wanna know.”

“What? Dynamic?” Elise piped up from her spot next to Corrin.

“No, just because I could be suited for the role.” Takumi replied, face straight but faintly pink, “Because I’m… decent at sniping things.”

“Sniping?” Camilla said, “Niles can already do that.”

Takumi just looked away, looking faintly uncomfortable but not saying anything more and Leo hesitated before pressing his shoulder into Takumi, who didn’t relax much but leaned into it after a moment.

The people in the room had facial expressions that Leo really really didn’t want to look at, but Camilla, Corrin, and Elise all made sounds that sounded suspiciously like snickering and some variation of _“_ _ awwwww. ” _

“Okay! I have things to do since Father isn’t here and we’ve had a  _ wonderful _ chat,” Leo managed to say without tripping up from sheer cumulative mortification, “Please talk about me when I'm not here! Thank you,” and he dragged Takumi off the couch and out the door.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Takumi remarked, “All the drama shows that you humans like to watch are over-exaggerated, aren’t they?”

“Dramas? Where the hell did you watch dramas? And what do you mean that wasn’t bad, I want to  _ die _ .”

“That can be arranged.” 

“That- That’s not what I meant! It’s a figure of speech.”

“What? Then why would you say that?” They had slowed to a quick walk down the hallways and started up a side staircase with dramatic swooping marble and giant, ancient paintings.

Leo made a garbled frustrated sound as a response.

“Ookay, whatever you say. I got some script to one because it was lying around this person-I-ate’s house and it was pretty good? So I got some of my servants and some lower-level demons to act them out.”

“Do you have a lot of free time or something? What the hell. Aren’t you supposed to be terrorizing people and taking revenge?” Leo said, absolutely baffled.

“How do you know I’m not terrorizing people by producing massively cheesy dramas and forcing them to watch? It’s pretty effective for the type of people I usually get. You know, the angry revenge seeker.”

“Wait, then how do you not know what a car is?”

“Oh, I saw that in the script but I didn’t know what it was, so I got a goldfish demon to act one out as best it could. You ‘got in’ by sitting in its mouth, but it didn’t know what ‘drive off’ meant either so the goldfish ended up swallowing a lot of actors before I yelled at it.”

“It’s nice that you have hobbies and all,” Corrin said cheerfully, somehow waiting for them at Leo’s office, sitting in his chair and eating his secret snacks, “But I need a super small favor from you.”

“What- Hey! Don’t eat my dried tomatoes! I need sugar for work!”

Corrin just ripped a fragment off the slice they were currently holding and smiled sweetly at Leo, “But I’m  _ starving _ . Xander’s snacks suck. Obscure legal documents are definitely not digestible.”

Leo just sighed, “I hope they weren’t anything important…”

With a scoff, Corrin sprawled even more on his desk, pushing aside a few papers to do so. “No way, that would make Xander work even longer hours which would make Camilla irate which will make Elise and you worried and make everything suck. Obviously.”

Picking Corrin up by the scruff of their neck, Leo dumped them in the chair across from him. “Alright, what do you want, then?” Leo said as he tried to rearrange the ever-growing stacks of paper and files so that they made some sort of sense.

“Whatever Garon tells you to do,” Corrin said, leaning forward in the chair and suddenly serious, “Don’t kill people needlessly.”

“You think I would kill people because I think it’s fun?” Leo furrowed his brows and couldn’t decide if he was hurt or offended, “What do you think of me, Corrin?”

“No, but you’d do it out of duty, “ Corrin replied, “Or do something irreversible to yourself if you think it would be for the better- look, just don’t accept being Garon’s executioner so easily, alright? Take it as life advice from an older sibling.”

Honestly, sometimes Leo forgot that Corrin was his older sibling, considering how they seemed to be permanently stuck in the ‘rebellious teenager’ phase even though they were more around twenty. 

“Alright,” he acquiesced, “Though you likely are going to come as well. I can’t see a reason not to bring you.” 

At that, Corrin finally smiled their goofy smile again.

Leo was stuck trying to signal to Takumi that the demon should take a seat next to him, rather than standing and watching the conversation as if it were an especially interesting ping-pong match. 

“Sooooo,” Corrin drawled, and Leo instantly had a feeling of dread, similar to the feeling of being Silenced by several enemy sorcerers, “Tell me about why you like Leo, Takimimi.”

Takumi, still not sitting down, blinked at Corrin before replying, “Why do I need to tell you anything?”

Corrin scoffed and laced their hands behind their head. “I’m Leo’s sibling, unfortunately for him, which means I can turn the tide and make all the siblings disapprove of you if I don’t like you. So, convince me.”

“I swear I have a demon of a sibling,” Leo said, holding his forehead and missing Takumi and Corrin’s strange expressions, “Can’t you just leave us alone?”

“Nope!” Corrin said, far too cheerful, “Just for that, you have to tell me something you like about Takumi or I’m gonna tell Camilla you’re stringing people along and playing~”

Leo wasn’t sure if Camilla would believe that but the chance that she would was too scary. He really, really didn’t want to go through Camilla’s version of ‘education’ ever again if he could do anything about it. 

“Fine,” he gritted, feeling the blood rush to his face again. At this rate, he might as well just throw his reputation as a relatively stoic and reasonable person in the trash. Nothing that had been happening recently was even remotely reasonable. “Takumi is…cute, sometimes.” The thing about dramas was really strange and almost surreal but qualified?

“What? That’s really half baked, but it makes you look adorable, too. Sneaky. 4/10.”

“Why are you rating them!?”

Corrin completely ignored him.

“It’s funny when his face turns red,” Takumi said, deciding to participate for absolutely no reason he could discern except to embarrass him more. He even had a hand resting on his chin, while still standing, contemplating it. There was no reason to, alright?! “And he gets flustered really quickly.”

“Ah, a hint of sadism, nice touch, I definitely can relate. 7/10,” Corrin said, now grinning like a shark.

“Why was that better than what I said? That makes no sense!”

Takumi just snorted and coughed, as if he was trying to hide a laugh. But he definitely also looked smug about winning.

“You guys are seriously competing over this? It was a joke,” Corrin said as if they hadn’t just shown up to cause general chaos. Standing from their slouch on the chair and stretching, light armor plates clinking from the distortion, they waved their hand at them. “Too bad, as much as I want to lovingly annoy you, I’m busy, unlike you. I’ll see you~” and they pranced out, nearly colliding with a guard, and after a quick “sorry!” they ran off.

“Corrin is definitely… something,” Takumi decided to share.

“That’s an understatement. But they’re family, and family I actually like. Taking them on this mission makes me a little worried,” Leo replied, absently looking out the window toward the castle gardens, where a scattering of servants worked steadily, “But that’s beside the point. I apologize, you followed me but I have nothing interesting to do and nothing to entertain you with.” 

Takumi paused by the window behind him, examining the scenery outside with poorly concealed interest. 

“Well. It’s not like I had anything better to do. Sitting in your house for a day would be even worse,” he said, still staring out into one of the castle’s many courtyards, “What do you do here, anyway? Sit here and look princely?”

“I’m the royal sorcerer,” Leo gritted out, trying to ignore the passive jab, “Which means I look over all the sorcerers in the army and in the research division, even if they might not think highly of me.” 

“But you managed to summon me, which suggests that you’re also qualified to be the royal summoner.”

After a pause, Leo deliberately chose to reply, “I’m not the royal summoner. Don’t let other people know I keep a hoard of ritual-sharp tomato knives, alright? Or the ritual-summoning books.”

“Ah, yes, your weapons of mass destruction, if people were tomatoes,” the demon said wryly.

They smirked at each other before realizing what they were doing. Takumi pointedly went back to staring out the window and Leo went through some of his more urgent papers, all piled haphazardly on his desk since his retainers usually helped him out. Well, as much as their attention span was able to, especially in the case of Odin. Niles was prone to walking off and causing scandals, but that also came with a lot of useful insider information. 

“Should I help?” Takumi asked eventually, “That’s an obscene amount of papers.” 

Leo looked up in surprise and considered his paperwork for a minute, “No, it’s too specific and technically classified.” Staring at his books for a minute, he had a great idea.

“Takumi. Do you want to watch an actual drama? ”

His attention visibly zoomed in on Leo’s face in anticipation, and if he had ears they would have perked up like a dog’s. 

“You have dramas?” The tone was too even and flat compared to Takumi’s usual grumpy tones to be natural.

“Ah, yeah, just let me get my tablet. I think Elise downloaded some onto it…”

Digging through his stacks of paper again, he found his tablet under a coffee mug, luckily still with about half the battery left. Turning it on, he went through the app that Elise downloaded and put in a folder labeled “ELISE!! Do not delete!” and handed it to Takumi, who held the tablet gingerly. 

“You can pick anything you want from that, they just have ads on them.”

Takumi just stared at the device with wide eyes and didn’t move.

“...you know how to read, right?”

That prompted a scowl as expected, and Takumi awkwardly tapped something and held the tablet far away to squint at the words.

...Did demon’s need glasses? Takumi certainly acted like he did.

After handing Takumi a set of headphones and teaching him how to scroll, he started replying to a cascade of emails that had accumulated in the short amount of time he had been too distracted by the demon to check his phone. Takumi was completely absorbed by one of the myriads of eastern historical dramas he had chosen, though he often readjusted his headphones as if they hurt his ears and was sitting as far from the tablet as the headphone chords were able. 

It was a pretty nice afternoon, though he probably ended up drinking an unhealthy amount of coffee and his eyes were _definitely_ massively tired. But it was a peaceful type of tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished writing this, I just need more motivation to finish editing haha. 
> 
> I'll try to update every week ^^ Though that means I need to poke my beta to finish reading at least 14 more pages
> 
> Feel free to leave comments/suggestions/corrections, I'm pretty chill about that type of thing
> 
> Its the first time I wrote something so long so yaaay looool  
> (abt 50k)


	2. Poor uncultured demons

As expected, Garon summoned him the next day with Corrin, to kneel in front of him in his ostentatious throne room with its large classic halls, high ceilings, and elevated seats for the King and his advisors.

“You know of the conflict arising in Ylisse,” Garon began, “and you know why I summoned you here. Show no mercy, and crush our enemies, my children, lest you waste your birthright in trifles and spoil yourself in the indulgences I have given you. Prove your worth!”

Leo internally winced, reminded of his ‘indulgences’. Being reprimanded day after day for the littlest things and then ignored for weeks- it was far too whimsical to be comforting even in familiarity, even in a bastardized way. 

After a long rant about how Ylisse was full of traitors and the usual one-sided spitting match, Leo found himself with Corrin and Takumi on a train to Ylisse. They weren’t traveling with soldiers because Ylisse already had quite a few stationed there to deal with the riots. It wasn’t as if Faceless required food or sleep. Additionally, Leo had the sneaking suspicion that Garon knew that he could summon but was just biding his time for… something. Why else even consider only sending him and Corrin? 

Though his acknowledgment was satisfying in a twisting, hateful way, he was grateful that only Corrin and Takumi had come, because that would make hiding Takumi a lot easier than if Odin, Niles, Silas, and the entire army Corrin had eating out of their hand had come as well. Though given how Corrin glanced at the two of them and looked like they had to physically restrain themselves from cackling, perhaps not.

Takumi looked a little listless, sagging against the seats and half asleep even though he had slept on Leo’s couch for a solid twelve hours before the train ride. Leo would be more concerned if Takumi wasn’t also still listening to some drama and silently  _ giggling _ every few minutes. 

“Really?” Corrin said dryly, “You got him addicted to dramas? Elise is gonna be so excited.”

“Hey, he liked them before. I’m just giving him access to more.”

“And he looks so tired… stay up late last night?” 

Corrin was full-on smirking now and Leo turned completely red. Takumi, the lucky bastard, hadn’t heard because of the headphones.

“ _ Corrin,” _ Leo hissed, mortified, “ _ Shut up.” _

“I get it, I get it,” Corrin fanned Leo’s face with their book, “Embarrassing, right? Awww, you’re so  _ cute, _ baby brother.”

“ _ Corrin,” _ Leo said between clenched teeth, face so hot he half covered it with a hand in an attempt to hide it, “ _ I’m gonna summon a hundred magic baby chicks into your room every. Single. Night, if you don’t stop.” _

They held up their hands in surrender in an attempt to placate him, “Alright, alright, man you’re vicious. I would never do something so horrible as to disturb someone’s sleep. You obviously

have no morals whatsoever, Leo. Just because I got scared of  _ one evil, demonic hen _ that  _ one time _ -”

“If I have no morals, then yours would have turned into a piece of charcoal from how long you’ve left it out in the sun to dry,” Leo muttered.

“Hey, hey, don’t you know it’s an older sibling’s job to bully the younger?” Corrin said with an easy smile, and they ruffled Leo’s hair in a way they hadn’t done in a while. “I miss small, adorable Leo sometimes, you know?”

Leo grumbled and pointedly shoved his face into his research journal. Though he must have read and revised the spells and circles in it until the paper was more inked than not, reading the familiar rough paper was comforting, and there was something very satisfying from filling it with his neat handwriting and drawings. He flipped to his notes on the demon summoning ritual to figure out how the demon managed to escape his circle, and if he had missed any calculations- so he took out another tome for reference and began looking through them to check his symbols. 

Corrin sighed dramatically. “Don’t you know how to do anything but  _ study? _ ” and promptly slouched sideways and gave Leo a petulant look, like a cat trying to stare someone into playing with them. When ignored, they just pulled out their phone and started texting. Probably with Azura, or perhaps someone entirely new- Corrin picked up friends so fast Leo couldn’t possibly keep up who was the latest. 

After a while, Takumi looked up from his drama and noticed Leo’s pile of books. Taking the headphones off, he narrowed his eyes at the script and finally leaned over to look over Leo’s arm at the page in interest.

“What are you looking at this for? Haven’t you already summoned something?” he asked. It was a nonchalant question.

“I was trying to figure out how it shattered- for safety reasons,” Leo said, intensely aware of Corrin right across from him. 

At that, Takumi looked smug as if him breaking out of a containment circle was a big deal. Well, it  _ was _ , but that smug face suited his face a little too much.

He leaned in even closer and Leo stiffened up at his face existing so close to his ear. Within cupped hands, Takumi said, voice so soft he could barely hear it, “Why do you want a stronger circle? Are you planning on entrapping me the next time?”

Involuntarily shuddering from the breath brushing his ear, he stammered, “N-no, that’s not what I meant, it’s usually dangerous? When things break.”

Corrin was radiating amusement but Leo pointedly avoided their gaze.

Slumping back, Takumi let out a massive yawn that cracked his jaw before settling back and sticking his legs in Leo’s lap, all while staring straight at Corrin. Which didn’t really work since the demon looked like hell. 

“You, why do you look so tired?” Leo asked, concerned, “Are you… getting sick?”

Once again, Takumi looked at him with the ‘are you stupid?’ face. He leaned forward, not even taking his legs out of Leo’s lap, to whisper again but Leo reflexively also moved back. At a standoff, they stared at each other before Leo tentatively moved back to where Takumi was waiting expectantly. What he didn’t expect was for him to immediately throw the arm on the cushion’s side around Leo’s shoulder to drag him closer. He said in a low tone, “It’s because I don’t have a food source right now. I’m just starving for something to eat.”

Leo swallowed, unsure if he was considered food. After all, there was only… Corrin to stop any potential homicide, and Leo didn’t like his chances when they were in such a cramped train compartment. Maybe if he were an entire kilometer away he’d have more of a chance, but the demon’s clawed hand was practically next to his neck in their strange half hug.

“Oh dear~ So you want to snack on Leo, huh?” Corrin rolled their eyes and swung themselves upright before standing and stretching, “This is getting into too-much territory. I’m just gonna go get some food from the restaurant down a couple of cabins. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do~” (As if that list was very long)

And with that Corrin sashayed their way out the cabin, winking at them before slamming the door.

Leo’s face was completely red, and when he turned to look at Takumi to accuse him of- _ something _ , he saw that his face was also faintly pink.

“Did you have to say it like that?” Leo sputtered, still mortified. 

“Humans have too many ways to imply things,” Takumi hissed back. “How am I supposed to keep track of them all?”

Leo held a moment of silence for Takumi’s bastardized cultural education before he finally confronted the real problem.

“So… what do you need to eat? It’s not my soul, is it?”

“Don’t want to die quite yet? I thought you were ready only a day ago, at the summoning circle.” 

Takumi’s grip on his shoulder tightened as Leo struggled to put his thoughts into words.

“It’s not that I was… ready to die, yesterday,” Leo said slowly, “but more like I forgot why it wasn’t a thing I should be okay with, for a moment. Now, after visiting with my dear, loud, chaotic family....it’s not quite the same feeling.”

After a moment, Takumi looked away awkwardly. “I can eat magic power as ‘food’ instead of souls. There’s no reason for me to eat your soul right now.” 

“Oh, right- wait, how do you even get magic power from people to eat? It’s not like I have a link to you to channel it since you  _ broke _ the contract.”

“I told you,” the demon said irritably, “I can drink blood, which is a conduit for magic in the body, to restore it. Unless you want me to bite your Grimoire or your arm off? I don’t think so.” 

“Takumi, Brynhildr isn’t a part of my body.”

“Shut up.”

Leo sighed, “Well, I guess you can drink my blood- Just because you look incredibly unwell! I wouldn’t offer this normally, alright? Don’t think you can treat me like a juice box!”

“Juice box? I could turn you into juice, but you don’t look anything like a box,” Takumi said, squinting his eyes in confusion, “But I’ll take it.”

Leo paused, expecting him to go for the neck like the trashy vampire movie Corrin and Camilla had dragged him to watch, but Takumi just looked at him expectantly.

“What?” he said, unsure, “What are you waiting for?”

Takumi tilted his head and frowned. “Well? Where should I bite you? I doubt you want me trying to scrape blood off your forehead.” He paused and considered Leo’s torso. “And I know places where if I puncture your skin you’ll bleed to death, but I don’t think that’s the effect you’re going for.” 

“The neck and wrist vein should be fine, and the inside of the elbow is where they draw blood... Foreheads actually bleed a lot, you know.”

“Do you really want a bite mark on your  _ forehead _ ,” the demon remarked, tone dry, “What would the children think. What would  _ Corrin _ think.”

“You think I meant that you should go ahead and bite my forehead?? Do you think I look that dumb?” Leo sputtered. At Takumi’s deadpan stare he rolled his eyes and finally acquiesced. 

“Okay, fine. Just bite my arm somewhere, alright? And make sure to not bleed me dry. I still need  _ some _ blood to function.”

Without any further ado, Takumi promptly rolled up Leo’s sleeves and leaned over to bite him on the wrist. Leo didn’t know what he expected, but there was only a second of sharp pain and a weird drained feeling as the demon… licked up his blood? But the world was getting too hazy and cold, and Leo couldn’t help his eyes sliding shut.

Ah shit… Maybe this was a bad idea?

Leo couldn’t help slumping farther against Takumi, who he absently noticed was still wearing his clothes, and who was so much warmer than he was, and was still drinking his blood without even getting any on his face or long, long grey hair- and Leo blacked out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha I'm a week late because me and my beta Zalaphinia were playing Tree of Savior rip.


	3. Please stop acting like 'problems' are 'funny situations'

Takumi followed Corrin down the streets of Ylisse’s capital, winding narrower and narrower the closer they got to the old castle. 

Unexpectedly, Corrin whirled to arm in arm with Takumi, a sly grin on their face.

“So,” Corrin drawled, “Why go with a hair-brained scheme like pretending to date my dear cute younger sibling? I didn’t think you were quite  _ that _ dumb.”

Takumi guessed he should have expected that.

“What other reason would someone as random as me showing up be excused so easily? Family is easily distracted over the relationships of their members.”

“You could have pretended to be a new retainer he picked up,” Corrin pointed out dryly, “God knows the only qualification for that is being someone suspicious. And I wouldn’t have picked up on it so fast.”

“But you would recognize me, anyways. What's the point?”

“Well even if I didn’t, Leo’s embarrassment levels were pretty accurate. If I didn’t know that you were weirdly not shy, it would be suspicious because you didn’t seem to be intimidated by the fact that you were talking to Nohr’s  _ royal family _ . Random people off the street, encountering Xander or Camilla? There’s no way they could be so unaffected.”

“Ah. I’ll keep that in mind,” Takumi replied, frowning, “I’ll need to do more research.”

“By watching dramas?” Corrin snorted, “Sure. If anything, it’ll be hilarious to watch.”

“Shush, the modern ones have less archery and cool people,” Takumi muttered petulantly, “It’s not my fault humans decided that love triangles were more interesting than murder triangles.”

Corrin eyed Takumi suspiciously, “What’s a murder triangle?”

“A love octagon that becomes a triangle via murder.”

“Nice. you planning to use that trick on Leo’s admirers?”

“Why would I? I’m not that petty.”

With a snort of disbelief, Corrin wandered through to the plaza where the number of people wearing face masks and gloves increased. Corrin handed a face mask and a giant hat to Takumi before putting one on themselves.

“Expecting trouble?” he asked, figuring out how to put it on from example pretty quickly. It had the added bonus of letting them blend in a little more with the crowd, who were also wearing strange masks.

“The riot police here are bastards,” Corrin replied, “Don’t want to get caught up in anything. Not that the masks help that much, but being indistinguishable is more valuable.”

“Is that why you made us wear a… sweater?”

“Of course! What sort of civilian can afford my armor or Leo’s dress shirt?”

Takumi had no idea what they actually cost, just that the shirt he had borrowed was pretty soft. But he still liked his robes better- less buttoning, less breezy.

As they approached the Nohrian controlled building, the crowds thickened until they couldn’t move forward without bumping shoulders or sliding through the small gaps between the numerous bodies crowding the area. Scattered among the people who were obviously citizens were people that had been trained in their posture, in their alertness, and with their weapons carefully concealed on their body as to nearly be undetectable. 

The taste of stale magic danced on the breeze that glanced off the stone and wood cobbled walls and whipped the banners and pennants of the Ylissian flag and what little foliage that cascaded off the balconies so high above their heads that they blocked the sun and cast the crowd in a muted shadow. Some seemed to melt in and out of them, though they didn't feel like summoned demons even as the static of dark magic users was unmistakable.

After all, Leo exuded that same static, that same enticing cesspool of energy even as he was completely oblivious to it. 

The same tension and coiling energy that wound Takumi up until he was agitated in his own skin, the blood he had drunk jumping in his veins.

“Cor-  _ Corn _ ?!” A voice cut through the crowd and a tall blonde man emerged in front of them, eyes wide and a little panicked, ‘What are you  _ doing _ here, Cor-, um, Corn. Prince Le- …”

“ _ Leon _ isn’t here with us right now, but he’s in the city,” Corrin responded, amused, “What are you doing here, Odin?”

He glanced around him before posing in some sort of grandiose gesture to the darkened plaza they were standing in. “This is my hometown! Didn’t Leo-n tell you that I was on vacation? I was visiting my old friends, ‘cause things have been weird here-” Realizing the context he hurriedly added, “My friends, who are definitely not causing trouble! No! I’m just here buying groceries for my… gramps.”

Odin was a pathetically bad liar. 

Corrin was smirking at Odin’s nervousness. “Right. So, wanna give us a tour? Leon wasn’t looking too good when we last left him, so finishing early means that we can watch over him a little more. Since all his retainers went bye-bye except for Takumi here.” And with that, they smacked Takumi on the shoulder, the picture of camaraderie. Except for the fact that his shoulder really hurt now. “So you should help him out, right?”

“A new retainer?” Odin looked at Takumi with alarmingly puppy-like eyes and he fervently hoped that the man wouldn’t start crying, “Leo~n, finally making more friends! I’m so glad!!” And Odin did something worse than crying. He hugged Takumi.

“Friends? What?” Takumi replied, utterly bewildered.

“Though the path of blood and battle that Leo travels is not to be treaded lightly, -” Takumi knew well the dramatics that came along with his dramas, but he really could care less about this man and so immediately tuned him out. 

Takumi carefully(forcefully) extracted himself from the man while Corrin was too busy bent over laughing. Suddenly turning serious, Odin ended his rant and faced them, looking a little worried.

“It’s good that Pri- uh, that dude isn’t here since everyone’s more agitated than usual today- though Tharja and Henry aren’t helping much with that- so if you need something from the Nohrian embassy or you’re just visiting, you should come back tomorrow.”

“Expecting trouble?” Corrin said, looking completely blasé about the warning, even as farther down the road an alarming cacophony of angry shouts and magical discharge permeated the air. “Ah, nevermind. The trouble has already arrived! I have such great timing.”

“You-” Takumi said, a bit exasperated that they were still loitering when there were more interesting things to do. Like spectating the fights, or stirring up even more chaos. Though he supposed the responsible thing would be to get out of there. How  _ boring _ .“Shouldn’t we start running or something? They’re approaching, and getting stomped on by a whole crowd of people doesn’t seem fun.”

Odin finally started dragging Corrin away from where they were enjoying the screams of panic and ran down the nearest side alley, Takumi following. But they were unexpectedly hemmed in by some sort of faceless demon, in police riot uniform and holding a massive shield and sword.

“Shit!” Odin cursed, backtracking down the alley and shoving Takumi and Corrin back a few paces, “They’ve gotten past our second scout-c’mon.”

He ran back down from where they came and approached the Nohrian building, entering a zone with more combat-ready people stationed around it rather than angry civilians. They were occupied in keeping an eye on the crowd and on the people holed up in the building and seemed to ignore Takumi and Corrin based on the fact that they looked like civilians.

“Owain?” a white-haired man calmly asked. “What’s the situation?”

“Robin, they’ve gotten as far as the next road over-” Odin (uh, Owain? People needed to stop making such horribly obvious alter-identity names) tried to explain, and the man nodded before turning and whispering something to a red-haired girl next to him before Odin even finished.

“Right. Thanks. I’ve been expecting them to escalate. Get into position, Owain.” Odin nodded and glanced at them uncertainly before running back off into the crowd and quickly disappearing, even though the man was wearing bright yellow and half-naked. Robin turned his sharp gaze on Takumi and Corrin, studying Corrin’s likely recognizable face. “And what are you two doing here? You’ve trapped yourself in formation with us. I’m afraid you’ve been cast with our lot, but we’ll do our best to keep you safe.”

“Oh thanks!” Corrin replied cheerfully. “Why’re you sieging the Nohrian embassy anyways? I don’t think it’s going to affect what's happening  _ all _ that much. Seems like a pain, doesn’t it? Waste of resources?”

The man raised an eyebrow. “You certainly have a lot of questions, don’t you? Unfortunately, most of that information is classified, so I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to. As it is, you should move further into the formation where it's safer.”

“No. Just put me where your other long-distance people are,” Takumi said bluntly. “And put this idiot where they can stab things.”

Robin quickly scanned Takumi, not seeing a long-range weapon anywhere, but decided to leave that question alone.

“I’m the idiot now?” Corrin asked, “Your plans are infinitely shittier than mine.”

That prompted a chuckle from Robin, though his eyes were still just as sharp. “So, what are your names?”

“Planning on buying us tombstones?” Takumi asked dryly, “I’m Takumi, that’s… Corn.”

The man’s face twisted in confusion. “Corn...you mean the vegetable?”

“Nope! Starts with a K.”

He processed this with a slow blink. “Well, for now, just stay with me. Takumi, you can get in position- if you don’t know where to go, ask anyone with long-range weapons. If you start shooting at us, we’ll have to take you out, sorry. Take care of managing friendly fire, alright? 

Robin smiled at them before vanishing in the formation with Corrin dogging his heels.

With a sigh, Takumi made his way to a place with better vantage- which wasn’t much in a flat plaza with no cars. Besides, all the high points barely had cover, so Takumi settled for squatting on some unfortunate person’s balcony, partially covered by foliage. From that point, he could see Corrin and Robin near the fountain in the center, and some soldiers who were guarding the entrances, including the road they had run in from. Except now, he could also see the Faceless summons coming from both the north and the south, likely trying to hem them in so that they couldn’t escape. With Robin far too vague with his plan, it was unsettling, but at least he didn’t have mortal concerns to worry about. Perks of being a demon. 

To be fair, he hadn’t been paying attention when Leo was being briefed on the situation. Human conflicts were usually so petty he didn’t quite know what to make of all this confusing political maneuvering. In hell, you usually just murdered the opponent(s) and washed your hands of it. Which made Corrin thriving in it a miracle; they didn’t seem to be able to act seriously for their life.

He materialized his bow for the first time in what seemed like forever, the elegant curves and familiar weight comforting. One day, he’d shoot Corrin in the ass for being such a pain in the butt.

Even if they didn’t cause it. Takumi blamed them for it anyway. They always seemed to be in the center of it.

So, he went along with whatever hair-brained plan that they had come up with and hadn’t bothered to tell him, and took out his frustrations on the faceless demons, sniping an arrow wherever it was most inconvenient for them. The constant string of headshots caused a few heads to turn, but he was quite well hidden from the people on the ground and in the plaza. He didn’t know why they were so surprised since there were others also hiding on the balconies and behind the window also thinning the crowd of demons.

During a lull in battle, he peered through the railings of the balcony to look for Corrin. He found them still dogging Robin’s steps, now accompanied by a tall blue-haired man (who was also wearing a ton of the exact same shade of blue; Takumi questioned his fashion sense). Behind them, something spawned out the shadows and Takumi reached for his bow in alarm as some sort of dark mage hurled a curse at  _ Corrin _ . 

Before he could even nock his arrow, dark tendrils swallowed Corrin, reappearing next to a hooded man wielding a very familiar book and glowing from the magic residue of the spell he had just shot out at the attacker.

Takumi dematerialized the arrow and used his free hand to vault over the balcony and join the two in their face-off. The dark mage was now standing next to Robin, glaring at Corrin and Leo while Robin and the blue-haired man were only staring at them with curiosity, one more confused than the other.

He finally dodged all the confused bystanders who were encircling them, likely concerned of an unexpected fight among their ranks, and reached their side. Robin’s eyes tracked Takumi with interest and he sighed, tired but gearing himself up for something he obviously didn’t want to deal with.

“So, Prince Leo and Prince Corrin. What… exactly do you intend?”

Corrin was confused since they had never been unironically called a prince in their life.

“We haven’t moved against you,” Leo said, sounding worryingly faint. “I was just protecting my older sibling against a curse thrown against their backs.”

“I could have taken it,” Corrin pouted, crossing their arms. 

“And then we would be in the same position, except you would be cursed with who knows what,” Leo gritted out. “I keep on telling you to  _ avoid _ dark magic, they’re not sword strikes you can just-”

Leo swayed, and Takumi put an arm around him in alarm. He was too complacent, actually leaning into Takumi for support even as he still held Brynhildr out in a vaguely threatening manner.

“Okay, I’m sure this looks bad,” Corrin began, “but how would you react if theoretically,  _ theoretically _ , Leo is probably trying to kill someone we know very fondly right now but just doing it very...stupidly?”

Leo glanced at Corrin with a blank face. “Corrin,” he began. “Why would you theoretically assume such a theoretical assumption?”

“What? You think you’re subtle?” Corrin scoffed. “And besides. Pretty much everyone but Xander and Elise very visibly want to commit patricide. Have you seen the look on Camilla’s face when she thinks no one is looking? Top tier ‘I want to stab someone I know’ face.”

“Are you sure she isn’t thinking about you?” Leo said.

“Are you done arguing?” Robin asked, too amused for the situation. “There are better ways to convince me that you don’t mean any harm to us, you know. Such as having a proper conversation.”

“What, your  _ friend _ certainly doesn’t have the same idea as you. She hasn’t stopped glaring at us like she wants to eviscerate us this whole time,” Corrin said. 

“You’re obviously Nohrian. Who knows if you’re just distracting us for your own gain?” the murderous black-haired female dark mage muttered.

“Would you rather we had just crushed this rebellion?” Leo hissed. “Instead, we end up in this stand-off like fools. What point is there to baring your neck if you haven’t resigned or sharpened your claws?”

“Have you been standing around Odin for too long again?” Corrin said with great sorrow. “Gods knows you’re out of it enough already that it's a miracle you make any sense.”

“Is he okay?” The blue-haired man asked, looking genuinely concerned for some reason.

Leo struggled a little from where he was squashed into Takumi’s side and attempted to intimidate them, but it only resulted in him planting his cheek on Takumi’s shoulder with Takumi nearly supporting his entire weight.

Leo was colder compared to how he was earlier on the train, and paler. What was more concerning, however, were the light trembles in his hands, which he tried to hide by gripping his book tightly enough to the point his knuckles were white.

“I think it’s severe magical exhaustion,” Corrin said. “Which you made  _ much much worse _ since he had to help me dodge your dark mage.” Corrin scowled darkly and managed to make the blue-haired man look  _ guilty _ .

“What in the world could tire him so,” said dark mage scoffed. “except summoning these hoards of Faceless to wear us out? Unless he’s so weak that a few dark curses put him on the brink of collapse.”

Corrin tensed and didn’t seem to have a good answer for this. How could they, not knowing how exactly Leo lost so much magic? Even if they did know, how could you explain that Takumi had somehow eaten it without also revealing that he was a demon?

Knowing this, Takumi did what was the most reasonable thing, results be damned. At this rate, he’d have to run away with Leo as a dead weight. It really wasn’t worth it on his stolen and yet barely-enough magic reserves.

“I’m a summon of his, and accidentally ate most of his magic recently,” Takumi stated bluntly. “so he couldn’t have summoned these Faceless.”

“Wha-Takumi!” Leo protested half-heartedly. He also knew that at this point it was necessary.

Everyone stared at Takumi, with their hackles up even more than before. Demons, after all, were universal weapons of destruction and misery when summoned successfully.

“You aren’t convincing us that you aren’t a threat,” Robin said, even more amused.

Takumi suddenly felt large, rolling malice coalescing in the square, and turned to see a nondescript mage collapsing just as their summon took shape in the midst of the crowd. 

“See? They’ve distracted me from looking for other suspicious mages, by being the most suspicious,” the woman muttered, moving to a more offensive position, as the summon materialized. It’s massive featureless face and a strange body ripping itself from the other dimension, covered in swaths of color that weren’t the same as it’s skin- some sort of armor?

“Hey, Robin,” Corrin said, full of apprehension. “You and Chrom able to deal with this? This is going to be pretty bad…”

Takumi had to agree. He could probably injure it to the point of returning to the other realm but not without a lot of effort and a lot of collateral damage. 

“We can’t leave,” Chrom gritted out. “Stand your ground.”

Well,  _ they _ couldn’t leave, but Takumi and Leo sure could.

Leo flipped open his book, looking like he intended to also fight the massive Faceless, the absolute  _ idiot _ .

Takumi just tightened his grip on Leo so that he couldn’t do anything monumentally stupid, and Leo was weak enough that he couldn’t put up much of a fight.

Corrin unsheathed their sword and readied themselves to attack alongside Robin. It seemed like they couldn’t avoid this turn of events.

Leo tried to struggle out of Takumi’s arm, presumably to help fight that thing even though he was definitely approaching complete mana exhaustion so Takumi gripped his bow and leapt straight into the air. Once there was no ground to stand on, Leo stopped trying to escape and clung to him instead.

“Takumi,” he hissed, “Are you  _ standing in the air? What the hell-? _ ”

“What, you wanna throw yourself into this fight when you look like a toddler could stomp you into the ground?” Takumi retorted, trying to figure out how to use a bow with one hand while Corrin rushed in to stab the monster in the shin, only to get thwacked 15 meters away by an arm the size of a tree trunk to the alarm of Robin and his soldiers. Corrin, of course, got up like the cockroach they were and proceeded to try and stab the thing until it bled (a little). 

“Hey, Leo,” Takumi said, and Leo glared up at him from where he was half dangling from Takumi’s hold on him. “I need my arm back- “

“Whose fault is that?!”

Takumi raised an eyebrow and slowly unwrapped his arm from Leo’s waist, and Leo let out a yelp before wrapping his arms around Takumi’s waist. He was kind of surprised that Leo still had enough strength to hold on like that but he was glad he didn’t have to do plan B: tying them together somehow. Now, with his arm available for archery, he fired a few arrows at the Faceless’ joints. At this distance and altitude, and with so many distractions on the ground to make sure the Faceless never really tried to attack him, it felt like he was just taking cheap shots.

He was finally distracted from his continuous firing when said deadweight started climbing him as if he were a tree.

“What are you doing?” Takumi sputtered, as an arm finally stopped dragging all his clothes down to curl around his neck and half strangle him, “Stop moving! I can’t aim with you clinging to me like a leech.”

“I’m going to accidentally let go and  _ fall several tens of meters _ if I don’t get to a better position,” Leo gritted out. “I’m just about ready to faint, though not before I punch you in the face.”

“You don’t have enough leverage to do that,” Takumi said, “You’d be better off trying to strangle me. But If you do that, I’m going to jump even higher so when you fall you’ll  _ definitely _ die. “

From the corner of his eye, Takumi swore he saw Corrin turn mid-swing and give them a shit-eating grin and Takumi realized, in horror, that  _ it looked like they were hugging _ . 

“Is there any way for you to give me back a  _ little _ magic?” Leo said irritably, right into his ear. “Who said you could drain me dry, huh? Where’s your self-restraint?”

“It was an accident!” Takumi said, bristling. “I underestimated how hungry I was- and sorry, I can’t give it back.”

Leo groaned and thumped his head on Takumi’s collarbone. Which  _ hurt _ . 

Unexpectedly, the Faceless also finally decided to look up and see who was sniping the hell out of it and took a swipe with its chain shackles. So Takumi did the logical thing- he jumped even higher to dodge and continued annoying it with his arrows. Unfortunately, he didn’t feel like wasting enough stolen mana to one-shot it. Corrin definitely could deal with a giant Faceless all by themselves, right?

Corrin had successfully given the Faceless a multitude of paper cuts on the legs at this point. Perhaps not, then? Though no one on the ground looked worse for wear, it seemed like Corrin was just taking a lot of hits playing around. 

“If  _ I _ can tell you’re just firing the equivalent of a finger poke to that Faceless,  _ why the heck are you firing arrows instead of, _ I don’t know,  _ helping the person you drained of energy not fall? _ ” Leo said, starting to sound extremely annoyed at him.

“I don’t want to be so dead that I drain the life out of you, you know. I have to save the magic reserves.”

“You mean  _ standing in midair _ isn’t wasting your magic reserves?”

“No. It’s not using my magic,” Takumi gave him an amused look, “My bow is doing that, not me.”

“ _ Your fancy bow gives you the ability to stand on fucknothing?” _

“Yeah. I can’t generate mana on my own, anyways.”

“What sort of demon can’t generate any magic? Aren’t demons magical  _ in nature?? _ ”

“Why are you asking me? I didn’t make myself.”

Leo let out a noise of frustration and hit his head on Takumi’s collar again. “Why do you not make any sense?” he groaned, sounding as if the demon’s existence personally offended him. “This is getting ridiculous. Next, you’ll tell me you’re actually some sort of bastardized version of a human that turned into a demon.”

“Are you implying my mother slept with a dragon? I don’t know how she would manage that, to be honest.” Takumi replied. “Also, is Corrin actually bleeding? Wow, I didn’t realize they could even do that.”

Leo whipped his head around to look for Corrin, which was difficult for him because of their position and the fact that they were at least a hundred meters in the air.

Corrin was indeed bleeding onto the front of their thin armor, though it couldn’t have been a deep cut. But Leo, inexplicably worried about Corrin, looked as if he was seriously considering jumping off Takumi to help Corrin out.

“If you’re not going to do something, I will,” Leo said through clenched teeth. He was starting to sweat from the effort of clinging to Takumi and from the tension in the air, and his muscles were so tense that the hold was very close to a strangle. Leo released one arm to hold out Brynhildr. Before Leo could go through with striking the Faceless, Takumi gritted his jaw and finally shot at the Faceless with the intent to cripple it and immediately gripped Leo’s stupid book to wrangle it away from him.

It burned at his hand, pain clawing up his arm with barely contained malice, but he still forcefully closed it and wrenched it away from Leo, barely hearing the Faceless’ scream from the crater his shot had made in its head. Well, it seemed it was more resilient than he had initially thought. Maybe Corrin wasn’t actually playing around?

“Give it back!” Leo hissed at him, swiping for the book with no more force than a kitten, arm almost sliding off his shoulder before Takumi caught him- but with the book in one hand and Leo and Fujin Yumi in the other, he descended from the air.

“You-” Takumi said back, and there were too many things happening for him to string together a coherent thought for a second. “Fine, you want to drain yourself until you keel over from magical exhaustion? Be my guest.”

They were close enough to the ground so that Takumi could let go, Leo stumbling and yet somehow managing to stay half-upright. Leo was still glaring at him, though a large portion of his attention was taken up by the Faceless, who was lashing out more violently than before because of the damage it had taken to the head. 

“Give me back Brynhildr-  _ Your arm is burning _ ,” his demands quickly turned to alarm and Takumi glanced over to see that indeed, his arm was blackening at a rather alarming rate. Scowling, he tossed the book back to Leo, who fumbled to catch it but still looked idiotically worried over his arm.

Takumi shook his arm experimentally, and spikes of pain shot up his arm as a few black pieces of soot fell off- the shirt, perhaps? He couldn’t tell where the shirt ended and the burn began, really. 

“Brynhildr tries to burn people it hasn’t accepted,” Leo said, “So don’t just take it from me-”

Hearing a cry of warning, they both looked up to narrowly dodge the Faceless’ limb, which instead smashed into the cobblestone previously underneath them. Takumi supposed that now that he had injured it, it was much more interested in killing him than it used to be. Wonderful.

He fired another half-charged arrow at the thing’s arm, ignoring the spike of white-hot pain from his charred fingers as he drew it back, and the limb nearly severed even as he felt his own shaking from the lack of energy. 

This was just a shitty situation turning even shittier. 

Leo was still staring at the slowly disintegrating arm with extreme concern.

“Don’t just stand there and gawk,” Takumi said, irritated. “Stay out of the way!”

“In the way?” Leo replied back, “And whose fault is that? I literally can’t move away from you without dying.”

Cursing to himself, he ran closer to the rest of the guards that were warily surrounding the monster in a defensive formation so that the Faceless would stop solely targeting him and Leo- if he got hit too hard, after all, he really would be useless. And Leo looked like he would be the same, except Corrin looked scrawny and was annoyingly hard to kill.

Once Corrin was close enough, said cockroach immediately smacked his back with their bloodied arm and cheerfully said, “Nice work, pineapple brain. You look like you’re about to faint though.”

“And what the hell have you been doing?” Takumi said, definitely not halfway to fainting from said force to his back.

“Hey, it’s not my fault you two were distracting me by being hilariously adorable,” Corrin replied. “Besides, Robin’s swordsmanship is also really funny. I’ve been watching his weirdo zig-zag sword too. How the heck do you  _ sharpen _ that thing…”

“Are you seriously commenting on someone’s sword when you’re sucking so much at dodging right now?!”

“Hey, fighting with people improves our bonds…” Corrin pouted even as the demon lashed out and left deep scratches on the Nohrian embassy, to people’s alarmed cries.

Robin, who had been startlingly close to them the entire time, said dryly, “Not helping much is not convincing me, dear Corrin. Though you’re welcome for the entertainment, I suppose. Use that equally strange sword of yours to finish it off when I figure out how to make it stop thrashing around. It looks more like some sort of demonic… feather.”

Corrin agreed overly cheerfully, bouncing next to Robin to get ready. Takumi was resigned to it, at this point. Let Corrin kill everyone with positivity and energy. Leo was still leaning against a building, still pale and with unfocused eyes, but was around the corner where the Faceless couldn’t easily reach when so focused on Takumi that he wasn’t worried. Feeling a surge of dark energy, he easily jumped over a swipe from the monster, who was getting more and more predictable the more frustrated it got.

Could Faceless even experience emotions? Takumi didn’t feel like thinking about reanimated monsters and their feelings at the moment, so he shelved the thought for later (never).

“Hey, Takumi!” Robin yelled, “It’s too focused on you- we can’t distract it from attacking you, specifically. Could you-”

“It’s already distracted by attacking me,” he said once he was close enough. “What the hell do you mean?”

“Ahh, could you make it an easier hit for Corrin? The neck!”

The area he had shot at before had broken away parts of the armor that naturally formed around the Faceless, and gotten a little of its neck that had been protected by armor-like impressions of hair- did he mean the other side?

Knowing that he couldn’t keep dodging and barely had enough energy already, he took aim and fired.

If he didn’t see another attack coming from his side, well, he had no more energy left to stay conscious anyway so it was quite convenient.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha, it's not a Saturday but I got busy and stressed whoops.  
> Actually I have a webtoon up for a contest, so most of my time is spent drawing 
> 
> If you wanna go read it's 
> 
> https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/adventures-of-crow-jun/list?title_no=446535


	4. Wait, we have to actually figure out a plan?

Takumi fired his arrow at the Faceless and promptly fainted. Leo held back a scream as they began to fall, and Corrin cursed fiercely as they flung their sword at them. Through what Leo is absolutely sure was sheer luck, the sword caught Leo’s pajamas and pinned them to the closest wall. Corrin immediately turned back to the Faceless and punched its head off with a snarl. The huge body slowly disintegrated as it collapsed.

Meanwhile Leo was struggling to get off the wall and onto solid ground. Unfortunately for him, Corrin had thrown their sword very hard and he wouldn’t have been able to free himself even at full strength, even less so while carrying a fully grown, dead-to-the-world demon. Corrin, after making sure no other hell-spawn mysteriously appeared in their midst, was very seriously contemplating their brother’s dilemma and how long they could get away with not helping them before Leo got too angry with them. 

Exactly 7 minutes later, a Leo that was too tired to complain had flopped onto the ground next to a near-dead Takumi. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that Leo could see him breathing ever so slightly, Leo would’ve been pretty sure he was dead. He could see the blood slowly seeping from Takumi’s head. Hm, maybe he’ll die of blood loss if that didn’t get looked at. (Although Takumi was so pale, how would you be able to tell how much blood he had left?)

Leo shuffled forward to lift Takumi’s head to inspect the gash. It wasn’t as deep as he expected (What was his hair made of? It was incredibly soft).

“You alright there?” Corrin asked as they watched Leo manhandle Takumi. 

Leo tried to reply but only ended up coughing, leaning to the side. 

“Hey, hey, don’t faint on me too,” Corrin, strangely enough, sounded worried. “Sorry I was playing around so much, I didn’t know you two would-uh, get hit? Fuck off into the sky? What happened to situational awareness?”

“Wasn’t I just put on bed rest by you today?” Leo said with a grating voice. “I didn’t realize Takumi would be so easily burnt out.”

“Yeah, cause he’s an idiot,” Corrin muttered. “And you are too. Do I have to pick both of you up and drag you guys back to bed?” 

Leo immediately grimaced and tried to run. Given his condition, he didn’t even manage to stand up before falling. Corrin grabbed him as he fell and slung him over their shoulder, doing the same to Takumi afterwards.

“Do you drink  _ steroids _ instead of water or something?” Leo sputtered, clinging to Corrin’s cape-thing. Takumi’s hair flopped over until it touched the ground. 

“No, you two are just light,” Corrin said. “If I had to pick up two Xanders I’d probably faint.”

“What are you doing?” Robin asked from next to Corrin. Corrin actually  _ jumped _ , jostling them from their bony shoulders. 

Leo groaned. “Please don’t do that, Corrin.”

“Where’d you come from!?” Corrin gaped, completely ignoring Leo.

“Well, this kind of seems like a bad time, but I was thinking we should talk?”

“I have two unconscious family members on my shoulders right now, can it wait?” Corrin said, jostling the people hanging from their shoulders.

“What? I’m not unconscious.” Leo said. “I literally spoke up earlier.”

“Leo, don’t make me knock your lights out-I mean, make you go to sleep, if you know what's good for you.”

“That actually makes absolutely no sense.”

Completely ignoring him yet again, Corrin grinned at Robin, almost nicely, and coo-ed, “Lead the way, birdie~”

Leo really didn’t want to be in the same room as Corrin with Robin around. 

  
  


“We didn’t expect such a large...Faceless today,” Robin began, all of them seated in the Nohrian embassy’s meeting rooms in a mockery of a formal political meeting. He supposed it was better than crouching in a garden and whispering(loudly) like twelve year olds planning a prank (which he and Elise definitely did NOT do).

Leo was present as well. He had refused to “go to bed” like Corrin had ordered him to, and so Corrin, out of the sheer spite in their heart, had dumped a still unresponsive Takumi into the chair next to him. His head was still leaking blood on the mahogany table, so Leo awkwardly took out one of his handkerchiefs and pressed it against his head. It was  _ wrong  _ for Takumi to look so mortal, somehow. But he didn’t know how to fix it other than by hopefully keeping some blood inside said demon and trying to bullshit his way out of sitting at the same table as people who would likely be considered ‘traitors to the state’.

“... It’s worrying, since it seems I’ve underestimated what Nohr is capable of throwing at us. But since Ylisse is a rather profitable territory, it makes sense that they’d get angry from us blocking their revenue.” 

Chrom patted Robin on the back reassuringly. “You couldn’t have known. At least now we can take that into account.”

This Chrom guy was way too nice for his own good, considering Robin didn’t look like he needed reassurance.

“Summoning a Faceless requires a great deal of preparation and magic,” Leo began, “It’s not something you have to worry about in the near future. I could only summon such a thing after at least a month of preparation. The sorcerer assigned here can hardly match up to me

“You know him?” Robin said, leaning forward in interest.

“Yes, I’ve worked with him before.” And Leo hoped he’d never see that slimy face ever again.

“Leeeoooo,” Corrin groaned, “Can we get to the part where we’re staging- wait, this place isn’t bugged right?” They swept eyes over the paneling on the ceiling.

Robin looked at Corrin in great amusement. “No, we cleared it already. But please do continue.” 

“Right. So we need to murder Father, but he’s notoriously hard to kill- not because he’s strong but because he has a ton of Faceless working for him that are much, much more powerful than the ones sent out as fodder. Injuring him is nearly impossible without removing those things first. Not to mention his entire inner guards will defend him until their last breath, because personal guards are like that.”

“Corrin, you’ve...you’ve actually thought about this,” Leo remarked in amazement. “How long have you-”

“Does it really matter? I never acted on it,” Corrin scoffed, a frown marring their face. “And for the worse. Shouldn’t have listened to Azura.”

Chrom nodded thoughtfully. “Friends are sometimes not the best advisors-uh, not that Robin is a bad advisor! Not at all! He’s great. Really, a blessing. We just don’t agree sometimes-”

“Just because I recommend you marry someone doesn’t mean you  _ have _ to do it,” Robin interjected, rolling his eyes. “It would have been better than some random villager like you would have chosen at the last minute, had I not bullied you into  _ not _ doing so. Especially when your plan was to marry someone that ‘looked nice’ from the main road. Are you crazy?”

A red faced Chrom coughed and placed his palm on the table. 

“Alright! So, you’ve already moved against him? What’s your plan?”

“Leo was pretending a high-level demon was his boyfriend to get close to Garon and assassinate him,” Corrin said, covering their mouth with their hand. The bastard was definitely holding back a laugh.

“I mean..” Robin said, pressing his face into his knuckles. “That’s not… a bad plan? It’s...a plan, I guess. Except it seems like the King doesn’t even trust his children, since you seem to have missed the opportunity even with that ridiculous set up. Killing him is rather hard, besides.”

“Isn’t it?!” Corrin said almost gleefully. “I nearly got stabbed by a gnarly looking shadowy-faceless lookin’ thing once! Man, was that traumatizing.”

Robin stared at Corrin before nodding his head thoughtfully, “He does like his creepy looking subordinates...it’s difficult to tell what’s a statue and what's actually a guard.”

Why the hell were these two people bonding over disastrously failed assassination attempts?

“You guys- ugh, nevermind. So, did you figure out how the Faceless are managing to stick around? They do require a source of magic for that.” Leo asked, trying to not make eye contact with the two weirdos.

“Well, it’s probably some sort of magical artifact, since they’re not his own summons,” Corrin said. “The only thing is, he’s never really alone and getting into his personal chambers is near impossible. His people are everywhere. It’s so hard to keep anything private in that place.” 

Corrin stared off into the distance as they thought about the times they were caught doing...some rather compromising…things.

“Can you tell where they are?” Leo asked, suddenly paranoid about anything he’d ever said in the castle. “I notice them, but I don’t know if it’s as pervasive as you make it sound…”

“Maybe?” Corrin said, shrugging, “It might be why he sent you to Ylisse, actually. Get you out of the way.”

That really wasn’t promising.

“Okay, so somehow get past his guards, which Takumi  _ could _ have done since people think we’re dating- but perhaps not anymore, and then disable his enchantments. ...We still have to get close, don’t we.”

“When he least expects us, yep.”

“And we need to deal with all the guards around him if we somehow fail to buy time for a second shot and they’re alerted...”

Robin interrupted, “If you can stabilize the situation here, in our favor, I’ll help you with this endeavor. Provided you are actually going through with this plan. It benefits us, after all, to have a king that isn’t quite as… egotistical, though that means my help is conditional on providing favor to Ylisse through whomever you put on the throne after Garon.”

“Xander…” Leo mused. It wasn’t ideal, since Xander was the most fervent believer in Father’s image and ideals. He was pretty sure most of that was due to his severe father complex. He wasn’t sure how, or if, he could be convinced. 

“Xander will listen to me,” Corrin said, with far too much confidence. “And if he doesn’t I’ll  _ make him listen to me _ .”

Leo decided not to argue with that. Corrin always had an unnatural way of getting what they wanted from sheer force of being extremely annoying to argue with. It was almost admirable, if Leo himself wasn’t also a prime target for snack-stealing and general mayhem.

“You’re all forgetting,” Leo said. “Takumi spent too much energy or something, and won’t wake up. I’m also burnt out and don’t have enough energy to donate to him.”

“He’s an idiot, huh?” Corrin muttered. “No sense of energy conservation or ethical refueling. Jeez, draining you like that gave me a scare. I nearly stabbed him with my steak knife, but he looked so confused...”

“He probably hasn’t been summoned for a long period of time,” Robin said, thoughtful. “He doesn’t have the experience.”

Corrin and Robin nodded in sync. Leo ignored their weird silent convo and checked Takumi’s head again. Although his hair was very much dyed a dark red at this point, he seemed to have stopped bleeding at least.

“You don’t have any backup magic-y storage thingies, Leo?” Corrin asked.

“A  _ what _ ?”

“Uh, faster mana regen. Mana potion?”

“Well, there are magic tonics, I guess, though those only increase a person’s magic for a short period of time,” Leo replied. “I didn’t bring any with me. The only other thing that can be a container is people, and dragon veins. But those are notoriously hard to find.”

“Can’t you stick him in a dragon vein or something?”

“Uh. I don’t know how safe that is.”

“Well, I doubt he’ll  _ die _ from it. Look, he’s been bleeding for a good 3 hours already and he’s still alive! He’ll be perfectly fine. It’s not worth it to try to sustain him with just your magic, since he nearly drained you out completely. And it only powered him for, what, three serious attacks? That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? I don’t know what his level summons are like.”

It did make sense that a high-class demon needed to stop every few hours to recharge, but the contract was also… was it even a contract? He was acting like it was, but in reality Takumi didn’t need to do anything Leo asked of him. 

“He’s not going to affect the vein, will he?” Leo said, uncertainly. “if he needs that much magic.”

“Well, unless you want to kill someone to feed him. I wouldn’t worry too much- worst case, just desummon him for a while until you recuperate.”

Leo decided to hide the fact that he had no clue what Corrin meant by “desummoning”, and turned to consider the maps of Ylisse he had seen before he had left. If he remembered correctly, there were a few veins nearby that were controlled by Nohr. 

“I believe the veins in Ylisse are heavily monitored by the head summoner here, so we would have to deal with him first.” Leo muttered, reluctant.

“But aren’t you the prince of Nohr? Can’t you just waltz in or something?” asked Chrom.

“Iago doesn’t like me. And since Father probably likes him more than me, I can’t enter if he doesn’t want me to.”

“Then let’s go terrorize him until he lets us in!” Corrin cheerfully suggested. “I don’t like him either!”

“I doubt we could annoy him enough that he’d let us,” Leo said. “I think you underestimate how much we hate each other.”

“Okay. So we kidnap him and then while everyone is confused, we go to the vein as “tourists” so he can’t be annoying.”

“Won’t he...know something is up then?”

“What’s he gonna do about it? He’s kidnapped.”

“I guess you have a point,” Leo said, although admitting Corrin was right always seemed like a bad idea.

“Well then,” Robin said, lifting himself out of the very comfortable chair. “It seems we need to reschedule our plans until the sorcerer is dealt with. In the meantime, feel free to… do whatever it is you do. I need to check over my people, since today was so chaotic.”

With that, he left the room with a friendly nod, and the other guards slowly filtered out, Corrin nearly bouncing outside to follow him. Leo was eventually left with a passed-out Takumi, without the strength to carry him anywhere useful, and Corrin was occupied stalking Robin like some sort of puppy.

Jeez. Leo almost felt sorry for the guy.

‘Heeeelloo?” Another overly cheerful voice echoed from down the hallway. A white haired head popped into the doorway, revealing a man with an extremely off-putting grin. “I heard someone needed me : ) ? Hahaha.”

Leo slowly took in the fact that he literally heard the smile in the man’s voice before replying. “Yeah, I guess, my friend hasn’t woken up yet.” 

Leo looked warily at him. He was wearing black leggings and completely covered in layers of dark mage capes with nice gold detailing, completely at odds with the tome so filled with malice that Leo could feel it from across the room. Those were… really nice capes. Where did he get it from?

“Oh wow, he’s totally out of it huh! I’m Henry, by the way : D. Robin sent me and not Tharja, cause she might’ve killed you instead. You would have made a nice corpse though!”

“...thanks?” Leo replied, confused.

Henry just waved his hand, and approached Takumi. And proceeded to poke him with a gloved finger.

“...You sure he’s a demon?” he said, pinching Takumi’s face like an aunt would a little kid and causing his head to flop over. “He doesn’t feel very… demonic.”

“I’m pretty sure. He came through a demon summon circle, after all, and he called himself the demon of Retribution.”

“Ahhh, that explains a lot.”

It explained nothing to Leo.

Henry, noticing Leo’s confusion, decided to explain. “I’ve heard from some other demons that I summoned-out of fun, that’s all!- that the current demons of Pride, Retribution, Chaos and some others I don’t remember don’t feel the same compared to other demons. Perhaps their container is just too human?”

How did Henry get info from other demons when all the ones he’d seen didn’t seem to speak in a way humans could understand?

Without so much as a change in facial expression, Henry removed his black gloves to reveal pale, thin hands, materialized a knife, and then stabbed himself right through the palm before putting it away. 

Some black blood seeped from the cut, almost like sludge, and Henry squeezed his own bleeding hand so that it dripped into an empty water bottle.

“What is that?” Leo asked, intrigued despite himself. He hadn’t seen any magician in the royal court do that.

“It’s a secret. Robin gets mad at me if I let myself bleed too much~ Even if blood is so pretty...”

“Could you teach me?” Leo said, trying to not sound so interested and failing. “It seems really useful…”

“Hm~ maybe some other time? You don’t actually enjoy bloodshed, do you?”

“Who said that dark mages need to like torturing people?” Leo said, though his face heated up in embarrassment. People always told him he was too soft to be a dark mage, and he wanted to prove them wrong while also wanting to be accepted. But he just couldn’t shut off his empathy completely, like some of them could. 

Looking away, he studied the desk as Henry somehow got Takumi to drink the mana. (It looked more like he was attempting to drown him)

“Huh. you’re pretty human for a human. Welp! No point in sulking about it. What’s the point if everyone was the same?”

Henry finished dumping the bottle’s contents into Takumi and neatly stepped back as the unconscious man began to groan. Takumi furled his brow, curling into the edge of the chair seat. Henry cheerfully patted Takumi’s head, declaring him on the path to full recovery before finally leaving them with a quick “Bye bye~” thrown over his shoulder, leaving Leo with a still mostly unresponsive demon.

Staring at Takumi’s scowling face for a few seconds, Leo abruptly realized it looked more like he was just having a nightmare now. He tried to shake him awake, only for an arm to latch onto his wrist with an iron grip. The hand ground into Leo’s bones, but he gritted his teeth and hissed,” _ Takumi, wake up! _ ” and shook him even harder.

With a snap, Takumi’s eyes opened with an eerie, glowing red, and fixed on Leo’s face, no expression at all. Then another moment passed, and he seemed to recognize what he was doing, quickly letting go and trying to sit up.

His face was twisted in embarrassment , and he took a few ragged, slow breaths.

“What happened?” he finally rasped out, fixing his still glowing eyes on Leo. With his hair falling out of his tie and the intense stare, Leo felt a little embarrassed too. (Only because he was being stared at so intensely, that’s all!)

“You passed out, then you weren’t, and now we’re getting you to a dragon vein so you stay not passed out,” Leo began. “And then we finish our business at Ylisse.”

“A dragon vein?” Takumi furrowed his eyebrows at that, and rested his head against the chair, “I don’t know… did Corrin suggest that? I thought they went extinct.”

“...uh, I...I don’t think geographical locations can become ‘extinct’, per se…”

“I don’t think dragons are a location??”

“Wait, you mean dragons are real?”

The two stared at each other for a long moment. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me and Beta: **watching/playing BOTW  
> Beta: Wait. We have something to edit right?  
> Me:  
> Beta:
> 
> Anyways we finished BOTW and the ending is very unsatisfying : ( why can't there be even a basic post-game


	5. One dark mage is already one too many

Leo nodded and Takumi sighed, closing his eyes. “Anyway, I suppose we should get over there… somehow. I just want to sleep.”

“Is that going to help? It’s a lack of magic, not energy.”

“Isn’t it the same thing?” Takumi groaned, “Besides, if  _ you _ sleep, then you can give me more mana, which will make me feel less like a sack of rocks.”

“Nevermind magic exhaustion, I’m going to faint from blood loss at this rate,” Leo muttered but stood up to leave. When Takumi just continued staring up at him from where he was slumped in the chair, he sighed.

“Are- are you able to get up?” Leo asked, concerned, “I don’t know if I can pick you up.”

Takumi just blinked at him sleepily and looked like he was heavily debating taking a nap right there.

It wasn’t fair. Leo also wanted to just keel over and take a good long nap, but the manners drilled in him dictated  _ no, you can’t nap in the meeting room, Leo. _

Leo pulled Takumi’s arm until he also got up, leaning heavily onto the table for a moment before trying to straighten and holding back onto the table.

“Are you okay?”

“Urgh. I feel dizzy.”

Leo offered his help again and Takumi considered it with a small frown before he finally gripped Leo’s shoulder and they stumbled out of the meeting room and out of the building, trying to find Corrin so that they could go home.

But Takumi’s weight on his shoulder suddenly shifted, and they stumbled a little once they crossed the threshold of the building. When Leo looked to his right, instead of a half-dead demon there was a disgruntled looking crow hanging off his shoulder with grey head feathers.

“What the hell?” Leo sputtered, and the crow caa-wed in confusion.

It had to be Henry’s fault.

Looking around the outside plaza, there was a distinct lack of said mage. Even Robin and Corrin were completely missing- where the hell did they run off to so fast?- but he did see the mage that had attacked Corrin earlier. She was also a dark mage, right? Apprehensively going up to her with crow-Takumi cradled in his hands, she pierced him a glare.

Lip curling, she spat out. “What do you want?”

“I’m just looking for Henry and Corrin- my sibling, the silver-haired-”

“The maggot leeching off of dearest Robin? Bah, they’ll turn up like a fresh corpse. Always do if you wait long enough.”

“Oh, okay, uh- do you know if Henry is around then?”

She looked at the crow in his hands and they promptly entered a glaring contest with it- uh, him. 

“Henry is better at dispelling than I am. Unfortunately, it looks like something that will wear off in time. You’d be better off waiting than asking him.”

“Eh? Why?”

“He’s crazier than I am,” she said flatly.

Corrin broke Leo’s metric for such things, so he didn’t quite know what was considered crazy.

“Um, thank-” Leo began but stopped when Tharja refocused on him and her snarl deepened.

“Get lost, baby chicken,” she hissed and went back to muttering to herself, chewing on her nails in the corner of the building.

Unsettled, he decided to go back to their hotel rooms to get away from Robin’s weird subordinates. A flock of crows had started following him, caa-caawing so loudly it echoed off the stone walls and it  _ really didn’t help him sleep that night _ . 

* * *

It turned out that severe mana exhaustion gave one an absolutely massive headache when one woke up and Takumi was absolutely not a morning person. Especially when he woke up draped awkwardly over the table, head jammed into the side of the bed and feet on the floor.

(He had set crow-Takumi on the bedside table the previous night)

Leo ignored Corrin making kissy faces at him the entire morning as he tried to get his coffee, managing to restrain himself from ‘accidentally’ cursing them. Takumi also looked like he very much wanted to stab someone with the pointy end of an arrow, but Leo thought that that was probably his default expression.

He blamed his still fuzzy brain for his full-body flinch when Henry waltzed into the room from the balcony, flinging open the curtains and letting in the cursed morning light stream past his thin frame. 

Henry...hadn’t been squatting outside their room the entire night, right? You know what? Leo wasn’t going to think about where Henry hung out when everyone else was asleep.

Outside, a murder of crows was spectating from the balcony as if they were Henry’s personal entourage. Takumi blinked balefully at the morning light, and Corrin turned with a twirl of their bathrobe as if they were expecting him.

“Henry! Sorry, they’ve just woken because I needed to take pictures for blackmai- I mean, I needed to take pictures of the beautiful scenery in Ylisse and got distracted! But the appointment is in a few hours, so would you like some breakfast?”

Leo squinted at Corrin from the bed, thinking very strongly about how he didn’t know what the heck Corrin was talking about, and that he’d like an explanation.

“Ugh, take a shower, you look like someone stepped on your face and mashed it into the ground.” Corrin scoffed, “And I’ll take care of the rest since my poor little brother is so exhausted. Aren’t I nice?”

“Yep! You’re super nice!” Henry said. “You sure you don’t want me to curse him for you?”

“Aw, thanks! Maybe later.”

Leo could describe Corrin as many things, and ‘nice’ was one that was still up for debate. 

He came back from his shower to find that Corrin had somehow gotten Takumi into Niles’ uniform, and Henry into Odin’s.

“Where did you even get their uniforms?” Leo asked, flabbergasted. “And Henry… you’re really okay with wearing that?”

Odin’s uniform had a very see-through top and a vest that didn’t quite cover anything. Nile’s, at least, had a good thick outer jacket. He really had no idea why Odin chose that uniform out of all the other options, but if he liked it...well, Leo had worn worse, alright?

“Nya ha~ The bloodstains might show up too well, but that’s alright! Do you think Tharja would rip my thumbs off if I made her wear this?”

Henry chuckled. Leo wasn’t sure if it was a threat or not.

“So, I scheduled a meetup for you with your dearest Iago,” Corrin said cheerfully. “And you’re visiting him with your retainers to discuss… boring things, probably. Try not to kill him I guess? It wouldn’t make sense for someone to murder him and ignore the chance to murder you.”

“Aww, we can’t? I was planning on doing so many fun things...”

Takumi looked like he was contemplating choking someone (preferably Corrin) until they explained what the heck was going on.

“Um, is Takumi going to be ok? It would be bad if he ended up fainting like last time.”

“What?” Takumi sputtered, offended. “I’m will not be a hindrance-”

“That’s why I asked for Henry,” Corrin said, rolling their eyes, “Though I don’t actually have hope of him pounding any common sense in your head. Don’t learn anything suspicious from Henry, alriiight?”

“I would never,” Henry protested. “Robin told me not to teach anyone anything remotely suspicious! Like how to preserve Faceless body parts!”

“...Do you do everything Robin tells you to?” Corrin asked, sounding too interested.

“Nya-... Pretty much?”

Corrin made a sound of understanding and promptly threw Leo his uniform.

As he struggled to get all the buttons done he heard Corrin ask Henry, “So, what do you think of Robin?” Leo abruptly tried to exit the conversation by turning to Takumi, who was picking at his uniform. He hadn’t known Takumi’s arms were quite so…muscular?

“How are you- are you feeling better, today?”

Takumi looked up, and though his hair was re-tied into his ponytail, it was definitely messier than before.

“Feeling better?” he asked, narrowing his eyes, “I suppose. Compared to the other dimension, this one has always felt like I’ve been swimming with tar in my brain.”

“Ah, sorry about that.”

Takumi looked up, frowning. “Sorry about what? It’s not as if it’s your fault.”

“Ugh, maybe it’s because you look so human..” Leo said, “It’s hard to remember that your human-like problems don’t have easy solutions.”

“I could look less human,” he said, amused. “It’s just that I don’t appreciate the freak-out phase when the summoner first sees me. It’s easier to just avoid it altogether.”

“Even if you look human, I think it's the eyes… people don’t usually glare at you like they want to kill you. Except for Tharja...and Henry. You know what? I guess it’s normal around here.”

Takumi nodded in agreement before stretching and standing up.

“Well, are we leaving yet? I’m starving.”

They looked to Henry and Corrin, who were knee-deep in a discussion about Robin’s physical characteristics.

Leo sighed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It turns out I am very capable of making my beta cringe.  
> Anyways next chapter should be fun : ) I'll post it next Saturday haha  
> The chapters after that... need a ton more editing  
> QAQ  
> How dare plot get in the way of stupid jokes D:<


	6. Iago and Leo were the bestest of friends if you ignored the fact that they utterly despised each other

They got to their meeting on time, pulling up to a very Nohrian-looking building, a stark contrast to the more flowery and cottage-like Ylissean architecture. The guards there were expecting them, so Leo stepped out of the car with his vaguely polite mask firmly in place. 

“Ah, Prince Leo! I trust you’ve had a safe journey?” the guard greeted, though he looked at their car with suspicion.

“Of course,” Leo replied. “I’m here to speak with the Royal Sorcerer.”

The guard nodded and luckily didn’t even look twice at Takumi and Henry masquerading as Niles and Odin. Though now that he thought about it, why didn’t Corrin just grab Odin to pretend to be Odin?

Then again, Corrin’s plans tended to be ‘talk to enemy leader -> help them -> kill things -> profit’.

Considering he was en route to Iago to kidnap him, it was a bit too late to have second thoughts. Especially since Leo had wanted to blast said sorcerer in a certain sensitive area since he was a kid. It was the perfect excuse. That was something kidnappers could do, right?

Finally, they walked up to an opulent office door that was only slightly less garish than Father’s palace. The guard smartly rapped on the door and waited until a muffled ‘You may enter’ replied. The guard opened the heavy door, and Leo stepped into an office not dissimilar to his own- though Iago’s had much more demonic-looking paraphernalia scattered around the room. (primarily dark-colored and ornate to the point that most things looked like they'd been chewed up by gnarled metal trees and then spat out with the splinters)  


He passed by what looked like various torn-up parts of Faceless in suspicious but unrecognizable devices, and a collection of books that would likely curse him if he so much as brushed them the wrong way. It was quite a respectable collection from what he could see, but Takumi only looked mildly miffed. Henry, on the other hand, looked a second away from attempting to give a detached Faceless arm a handshake.

Leo sat down in the mildly uncomfortable chair and stared across the desk at Iago, his long, wispy hair and his sunken eyes bringing up a well of pure dislike that had existed since time eternal. But there was only so much of that he was ever able to express in public. His ‘retainers’ were left standing slightly behind him.

“What brings little Prince Leo here? King Garon needed me to act as your babysitter, perhaps?” Iago began with a condescending smirk. 

Leo could almost feel Takumi’s hackles rising behind him as if it were a personal offense, but Leo smiled back with long years of practice and responded in a neutral tone of voice.

“Why, I thought he sent me because of a lack of progress on your part, Iago.”

Iago scoffed and turned his face so that the masked side covered his expression. “I had almost resolved it yesterday, but what would a lazy prince know about that? You being here will only slow me down, so why would you be here if not because you were getting in the way in the Capital?”

Leo gave him a sideways look, “You think Father couldn’t handle the affairs of Nohr? I had assumed you were his little pet parrot, always singing his praises and never questioning his competency. I’m sure he’d appreciate that of you. What other reason would he send me to help you if not for your inadequacy in executing his orders?”

As expected, Iago half rose from his chair from anger before remembering himself and sitting back down. The guards in the room were on edge- he really should not have been baiting Iago with them in the room, but he couldn’t help himself. 

After a few subtle calming breaths, Leo forcibly relaxed his shoulders and reminded himself that they’d deal with Iago… soon. Except Iago was already aggravated. Whoops. 

“So, why did you come to my office?” Iago finally said after a long moment of silence. “You aren’t here just to waste my time, right?”

“I was thinking of getting a briefing on what is actually happening here.”

“I sent reports,” Iago snapped irritably. “Or were you too lazy to read them?”

“Mentioning how they’re Ylissean scum and how they’re all traitors that deserve to die is very enlightening, yes, but does not particularly illuminate the situation,” Leo said dryly.

He also usually made Odin read any reports from Iago, mostly because he doubted Odin actually read them.

“Well, if you had an inkling of reading comprehension then you'd have known that some of the Ylissean royalty are at the head of this little rebellion, as well as that annoying no-name that suddenly ingratiated himself to them. If not for this, it would have long been over.”

“The roya- you did not mention royal members were involved.”

Iago rolled his eyes. “That’s a recent development. Unfortunately, if not for Nohrian control of this territory, the man would have been something of a prince to Ylisse. Which is likely why these people are so much more...passionate, than previous upsets.”

Leo tried to think of who he’d talked to in the previous day that could possibly be a  _ prince _ . Maybe Robin? He sincerely hoped it wasn’t the man behind him that was currently playing around with a Faceless mask.

“So, what has been your approach?”

“To  _ crush _ their insignificant little skulls. Perhaps I should cast something more efficient next time. It’s a pity they somehow managed to dissipate the Faceless I’d created just to make them regret ever-rising against Nohr before their pitiful deaths.”

“Uh-”

Leo fervently hoped that Henry wouldn’t crack a goofy smile from that type of overly-long, gorey description.

“Perhaps next time I should curse them to see their friends as demons and Faceless… make them tear into each other like the dogs they are-”

Takumi abruptly materialized his bow and smacked Iago right on his head. Behind him, Henry had already immobilized the guards, who were wide-eyed and looking on incredulously with their mouths magically sealed shut. One in particular had a crow perched on their shoulder, glaring at the man with puffed-up feathers, nevermind that it was the size of a golf ball. 

“Thank god,” Takumi growled. He took out his irritation by smacking Iago on the head one more time with his bow.

“...Aren’t you an archer? Why are you smacking him with it as if it were a club?” Leo asked. “It’s a  _ bow _ .”

“Oh my gods, you’re so uncultured! This is a  _ yumi _ , you bastard. And not only is it a yumi, it’s the  _ Fujin Yumi _ . You really didn’t read up on demons at all, did you? Gods, you think the  _ Fujin Yumi _ could get damaged from just smacking a human skull around? No way,” Takumi ranted.

“Uh, I-I see.” Leo would’ve definitely found Takumi’s obsession with his bo- _ yumi _ a bit weird if he wasn’t uncomfortably aware he was the exact same way with Brynhildr.

Considering the demon looked like he was considering smacking Iago a third time, Leo dragged Henry away from tormenting his captives with baby crows and got him to bind up Iago as well. 

Then he looked around the office to check if Iago had anything good worth steal-uh,  _ borrowing _ . He could almost hear Xander’s Big Brotherly Sigh of Distinct Disapproval. 

He ignored all the miscellaneous Faceless parts (And really, since they hadn’t dematerialized, were the Faceless still connected to said body parts still alive?) and quickly scanned the books on the shelf. There wasn’t anything too different from the Royal library’s section on sorcery, surprisingly- they were just creepy bind ups of existing texts, with a few unlabeled books, and some he didn’t even really want to look at -but none seemed to be what he was after.

He went through Iago’s desk next, but the drawers were locked. He snapped his magic at it to crack the locking enchantment with brute force and winced when his drained magic spiked back with a surge of pain in his head. Now Takumi also stopped looking at whatever Henry was doing (he was poking the Faceless limbs with a Faceless finger) to stare at Leo, but Leo ignored it in favor of going through Iago’s collection of fancy pens and personal journals. There was also a dark velvet bag of what looked like shards of crystals that just gave him a slightly unpleasant feeling, so he swiped that and the journals to stow in his coat.

Things that were especially unpleasant were important, right?

“Awww, you’re not killing him right now?” Henry pouted. “Well, can I ask him about these wonderful limbs? I kind of want one...”

“Maybe later,” Leo said. 

“Okay! In the meantime…” Henry picked up one of the pens and decided to test it by doodling surprisingly detailed crows and blood all over Iago’s face. 

Leo pointedly ignored the impossibility of Henry doodling red blood with a black inked pen. “So, how are we going to transport this many bodies…?”

After all, no matter if the guards are innocent or not, they couldn’t be left passed out in the room for someone to find. At least, he thought they were passed out? Leo had no idea what Henry had done to them.

Come to think of it, he should probably let Corrin know that things had not gone to plan, although he had no idea why they thought that Leo could possibly convince Iago to do anything. Maybe if he had acted like he  _ really _ didn’t want to go to the dragon vein?

Well, too late now. 

He pulled out his phone and called Corrin. 

“Hey,” Leo began. “So Iago started talking like he does and Tak- Niles got kind of mad, and-”

“Alright!” Corrin said, cheery. “Just stay there and relax a bit. I’ll come get you!”

“What-”

Corrin hung up on them.

He turned to ask Henry if he had any idea what Corrin was planning, only to see said man crouched on the floor, surrounded by angry crows that were yanking on his short white strands of hairs. Not a guard was in sight.

“Henry…” Leo began. “Where did you put the guards?”

Said man cackled and stood up, prompting a flurry of pissed off birds. 

“They’re right here.” Henry gestured grandly to the crows who were complaining in magically muted caws, all trying to fly up to claw at Henry’s face but failing. Probably because they didn’t know how to use their wings.

Henry had, in the meantime, kindly attached a magic rope to each of the crows’ legs so they wouldn’t get lost or eaten by a stray cat. It also meant that whenever Henry gestured with his arms, the crows were flung into the air on either side of him in a chaotic squabble of black feathers and alarmed caw-ing.

The golfball-sized crow was the only one free, perched on Henry's head, and looking down on the imprisoned crows with an air of superiority.

Leo decided to not piss off Henry anytime soon. Ylisseans were  _ weird _ .

Henry approached Iago with his weird cape of crows dragging behind him and turned Iago into a...a parrot? with a flick of a finger. “Huh,” Henry mused, looking at Iago-parrot curiously. “Guess that’s what happens when you try cursing a dark mage. Weird stuff happens.”

Picking up Iago-parrot, who was larger than the others with long, brightly colored feathers, Henry tucked the bird under his arm as naturally as if it were the latest fashion of handbag. The others sullenly clung to the small cape on Odin’s uniform, like some sort of overgrown pom-poms.

Someone crashed through Iago’s giant windows, Leo wincing from the sound of the shattering glass. The outside door guards rushed in.

Wide-eyed but obviously well trained, the guards drew their swords and pointed them at the masked, lithe figure in dark armor who had picked up Iago’s strange headdress and had completely flipped over the desk. 

The silver mask didn’t cover the person’s blood-red eyes and mocking, playful grin. They waved the ornate hat-thing at them before blowing a kiss at the guards and jumping out the window.

Complete with a fashionable cloak-twirl.

The guards rushed over to the windowsill to peer over it. From the second floor, they saw nothing but a tree rustling from the wind in the courtyard. 

“That...I’m not imagining this, right? I’m not dreaming?” said the female guard.

The other guard looked at her, considered it a moment, and then smacked her on the head with the hilt of his sword.

‘Have you woken up yet?” he double-checked under the window and behind the curtain while she clutched her head.

“Ow,” she muttered, rubbing at her helmet to no effect. Internal palace guards had armor that looked more decorative than protective, after all. “How the ‘ell did they get into the courtyard? There are even more guards on the ground floor…” 

She winced and side-eyed Leo, extremely apologetic. 

“Sorry that this all happened when you were visiting, Prince. You all right? I’ll just escort you back to your vehicle to get you out of the way while my partner clears up this mess.”

There was a manic tint to her eye but he had to commend her for not outright panicking at the disappearance of the person she was supposed to be guarding. He really hoped that they didn’t suffer too much for it… but perhaps it was inevitable.

He nodded and followed her out with Henry and Takumi trailing behind him.

“Tell me what happened? I gotta write a report and all for this,” she asked.

Luckily the other witnesses were either crows or right behind him so he could say whatever he wanted.

“I was talking to Iago about the situation when that person crashed in from the window out of nowhere… and did something to make Iago and the guards disappear. I’m not sure what. Other than that, you ran in quite fast, thankfully, so they weren’t able to go after me.”

An angry chorus of caws from the guard-crows sounded from behind them. 

The guard looked suspiciously at the crows adorning Henry’s cloak, who was still trying to crow out their protestation, but no sounds were coming out of their mouths. 

“Last I saw your retainers at the Capital, I don’t remember this many crows.”

“Ah, my retainer tends to try to follow the fashion trends. Although I’m not sure wearing crows is a trend… but you know how dark magicians are. I’m not entirely sure how he made those stuffed crows caw, and he refuses to tell me.”

Henry laughed through his nose. “Sorry, sorry! Just a little jumpy from the excitement!”

She nodded, looking a little on edge. “And the parrot…?”

“A handbag!” Henry replied cheerfully.

“Um. Right. So the attacker is likely also a dark-something or the other, I’m thinking, based on how strange the entire situation is.”

“Yes, there’s definitely dark magic residue.”

It was from Henry, after all.

“You recognize it?”

“I’m afraid not. It doesn’t feel like anything I’ve met before. Perhaps it’s Ylissean?”

“They looked like some sorta demon, didn’t they? Red eyes and all-Ah! Not to offend you! Some people naturally have reddish eyes. Apologies, Prince”

Leo decided to take advantage of the awkward silence that caused and not talk until they were back to their vehicle. The poor guard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zalaphinia: Hello, I, the beta, am sleep deprived as all f*ck now. F*ck. F*CK. Damn it why is this fic rated Teen. >>
> 
> AN: Excuse me  
> You want badly written smut? Do you? Do you really want me to inflict that on other people?
> 
> Also she's responsible for the Aladdin reference.  
> haaaaahhhhh  
> I can't believe the Aladdin joke actually made it in cuz it was a joke we only started mid-editing


	7. There are appprently only one and a half people taking anything seriously (Beating up people is serious business, ok?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw//violence  
>  Corrin gets a little violent but it's not too bad

Safely in their car, Leo sighed and rolled his neck, trying to relax his stiff muscles. Takumi ended up babysitting the sulking crows while Henry was driving (and honestly Leo was still in shock that such a person _could_ drive, to be honest). Said crows were mutinously piled onto Takumi’s lap, with the smallest hiding inside Takumi’s ponytail and trying to sing. It wasn’t relaxing in the slightest.

“What did you take from Iago’s office?” Takumi asked, glaring at Iago-parrot who had been tossed onto the floor of the car, unconscious. The other crows gave Takumi an unimpressed look and squawked at him as if telling him off for his bad manners.

Leo pulled out the books he had swiped and tossed one to Takumi before flipping through the newest one. 

“His research journals. There might be information on the Faceless he summons. Especially the big ones,” Leo said, “But also because a Summoner’s personal, hidden notes may be more helpful than the texts I find at the Royal Library considering they had nothing specific about you… though Iago tends to ramble.”

He didn’t really want to know the contents of Iago’s _private_ ramblings, but sacrifices had to be made, right? 

He took out the velvet bag and let the bag’s sides fall from his palm so that he was holding whatever it was through a layer of cloth. He’d had too many incidents with nasty things activated through skin contact.

Takumi looked up from where he was frowning at the other books (which he was balancing on the pile of crows) and looked at the crystals, interested. No, he was almost entranced. With a strange focus, he reached out to the bone-white shards until Leo closed his cloth-covered fist around it and frowned at Takumi, whose hand was still stuck midair.

“What are you doing?” He asked, bluntly.

Takumi looked confused. “Those things.. Feels familiar,” he muttered. “What is it…?”

Lost in thoughts, the demon stared out the car window at the passing houses.

Leaning forward Leo opened his mouth to ask Henry if he knew what it was but the man cut in.

“Nope! Sorry Princey, all I can say is that I’m surprised it’s not exploding. Or imploding? Tearing you up and twisting you from the inside out? It’s too bad, isn’t it, Nyahaha~”

Leo looked at the bag in his hand with mild alarm and carefully put it back into one of the deep inner pockets of his coat.

They finally made their roundabout way back to their hotel room, where Corrin was waiting with a smug grin, sitting at the same small table as Robin. Tharja was skulking in a dark corner behind Robin, face torn between a smile and a grimace in a way that just made her look tortured.

“Do we really need more people who would kill me if Robin didn’t tell them not to in the same room?” Leo asked, exasperated.

“Aww,” Henry said. “I wouldn’t _now_. You’re pretty nice! Well, maybe not the nicest, but you’re better than the Faceless at least!”

Leo couldn’t figure out if that was an insult or a compliment.

Robin just laughed as if he wasn’t the only thing preventing his entourage of insane dark mages from murdering him for fun. 

Corrin smiled and waved them over to all sit. Except there were only two chairs around a very tiny table, so Leo just stood there while Takumi stared out the window and Henry sat on the floor to fiddle around with… was that a Faceless finger? Godsdamn it, he kept that?

Leo slowly extracted the Iago-parrot from Henry’s side and set it on the table. Corrin took one look and started laughing so hard they nearly fell out of their chair.

“So this is the summoner that’s been giving us so much trouble?” Robin asked, amused. “It seems I need to brush up on my tactics.”

“Why didn’t you send assassins after him earlier?” Corrin asked. “It’s not as if you don’t have the people for it.”

“Who says I haven’t? Unfortunately, we’ve been more reactionary than anything else just because Iago somehow was capable of summoning so much and so often, completely going against my initial assessment of him... It’s strange.”

“Initial assessment… Well, I’d much rather smack people around than magic- them. What do you think, Leo?”

Leo blinked at Corrin, broken out of his tired daze, and frowned in thought. 

“To be honest, I didn’t think Iago would be capable of that amount of Faceless. I certainly wouldn’t be able to… and you say the attacks have been daily?”

Robin nodded. They all stared at the parrot lying rather pathetically on the table contemplatively before Robin finally cleared his throat.

“Henry?”

Henry lazily waved the Faceless finger like a wand from the floor. Iago abruptly transformed into human form, sprawled on the table with his limbs dangling off of it, head sporting a nasty looking bruise. He was still passed out.

“Nice work. Did you give him brain damage, Takumi?” Corrin asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” Takumi muttered. “I just smacked him a few times. Isn’t it _his_ fault for not having a hard enough skull?”

“I don’t think humans can change how hard their skull is,” Leo said mildly. “Although there might be a spell for that.”

Corrin considered Iago’s face. “You want custody of him, Robin? I wanted to make him suffer a bit for constantly trying to kill me, but I can let you hold onto him…I suppose.”

“Wait, what?” Leo sputtered. “He tried to kill you? When was this?”

Corrin stared blankly at him. “You thought me running around the Palace, falling down stairs and smacking into walls was just because I was being crazy?”

Leo returned the blank stare. “You also had a 40-degree fever at the time, Corrin. And you were flirting with all the suits of armor.”

“What about when my personal car abruptly lost all it’s wheels randomly on a cliff and I had to climb up a rock face and then hitchhike across half the country?”

“That wasn’t you being stupid on a mountain road with loose wheels or something?” Leo said dubiously, “You realize that when you came limping into the council meeting, you only said something about wheels flying away and climbing a hundred stupid bushes, and then passed out? I think everyone just thought you were high and dehydrated since when you woke up you didn’t bring it up again.”

Corrin covered their face with a palm, “Oh my god. I’m not _that_ idiotic. You think the car would drop a foot and then make _metal screeching sounds_ that _destroyed the floorboards_ if it still had wheels?”

He considered it for a moment.

“I’ve seen you get into arguments with children and lose. And I’ve seen you try to mount a horse with both of your legs in casts and one arm in a sling. What am I supposed to think?”

They started sulking, “Elise doesn’t count!... And I did manage to ride that horse. Screw you.”

“You tried to ride that horse off a cliff. As a shortcut.”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it? _Anyways_ , just wake him up already!”

Corrin promptly dragged Iago off the table and threw him onto the floor, where he finally woke up.

“Urghbluh,” said Iago very intelligibly. It took him a moment to realize where he was, and he immediately lurched toward Corrin even with bound hands and feet.

“I should have known it was you, filth,” he hissed. “King Garon will find out of your treachery, and you’ll finally pay for your wretched existence you disgusting son of a whor-”

A bare foot collided into his jaw and Corrin crouched to grab his face with a gloved hand, smiling.

“Now, now, Iago. Didn’t your mother teach you manners?” Corrin twisted his face until his neck was straining. “Sorry, I wouldn’t know. I’m just a bastard nobody, aren’t I?”

A bloody hiss was the only thing Iago could get through his throat. 

“So, why don’t you tell me how you managed to summon so many Faceless since you’ve graced us with a visit? Did dear daddy give something special to his favorite dog?”

“You’re just a monster,” Iago rasped. 

“How poetic,” Corrin said. They lowered their eyes, pale skin and pale lashes with blood-red eyes, and at that moment looked more demonic than Takumi ever did. 

“And yet you’ve been the one perfectly content helping Garon gorge himself in the blood of his subjects. What use is there for you in a world without him, then? _Enlighten me._ ”

Iago coughed into a broken laugh, but before it could escalate.

“Corrin,” Leo began. “I have his journals. Don’t let your emotions take control of you if he doesn’t cooperate. It’s not _essential_ that we get him to say anything.”

“Those aren’t my actual journals,” Iago scoffed, “What self-respecting sorcerer wouldn’t have a few fakes. As useless as ever, _Princ-_ ” His voice was cut off as Corrin gripped his jaw and twisted hard enough that he let out a strangled groan of pain instead.

Taking a deep breath, Leo examined the journals. He did already check since he himself used such a system (as any self-respecting dark mage did), but he reexamined the handwriting. Humans and demons were the same in their inability to be perfect in absolutely _anything,_ after all, and creations made from magic were either perfect or were imperfect in repetitive ways.

It was, as far as he could tell, Iago’s real journal. He looked at Iago narrowly, but couldn’t determine if he was bluffing or not just because he was already so beaten up from Corrin throwing him around. 

Takumi snatched the book out of his hand and squinted at it hard enough that Leo wondered if he was nearsighted.

Mildly, he said, “This definitely has the stench of dark magic.” 

Leo wasn’t aware magic had a smell. But Takumi glared at him as if intent on him understanding by force of eye contact. 

“Um… a smell?”

“Yes. The residue from different spells have different scents. And this smells the same as the Faceless from yesterday.” 

Leo kind of hoped that he didn’t smell like Faceless, whatever they did smell like. 

“Give me that,” Corrin said shortly, and the book was carelessly tossed over Iago’s head. Corrin gave it a loud, suspicious sniff, nose scrunching in thought. 

“It does smell like that huge Faceless, so it was probably involved in it’s summoning...I suppose you should focus on getting to the dragon vein instead, while the guards are still mostly confused.”

“Are you finally handing him over? Done beating him up?” Robin said, crouching to smile placidly into Iago’s quickly purpling face.

“Yeah, do whatever you want with him- I need to look into the stuff he’s hidden in his office again, but Iago really isn’t needed for that. Unless you’ve any objections, Leo?”

“Yeah, just one.” Leo gave Iago a hefty kick in the stomach. “Alright, I’m good. For now.” 

“Then our business is concluded. After things settle down here,, I think that I should be able to accompany you back up to the Capital, though my face might be rather recognizable…”

“Don’t worry,” Corrin was quick to reassure, “Your face is pretty plain.”

Tharja’s violent mutterings increased in volume. Leo wholeheartedly agreed that his sibling had a terminal case of idiot.

Corrin, realizing how that sounded, amended, “Uh, not that plain! I mean, I meant that your hair color is pretty common for some reason and it’s not like you wear fancy clothes as I do so you blend in, but? That’s a skill! Besides, who says you can’t be in disguise?”

Robin smiled as Corrin flailed around. Honestly, seeing them so flustered was strange, to say the least. Usually, the only person who could actually embarrass them was Camilla… but Camilla could embarrass anyone if she tried.

“In any case, that’s something I can take care of- just let me know when you plan on leaving. The situation here still needs to calm down before the King relaxes around here and you’ve just done the equivalent of kicking the wasp’s nest. Besides, your plans are horrifyingly vague.” Robin sighed. “I’ll come back later. Please refrain from making any horrible decisions before I can inform you how horrible they are.”

With that, he left with Tharja, the re-parroted Iago(with his beak taped shut) tucked under his arm. It looked bizarre with his normal looking outfit.

Speaking of people wearing strange clothing-

“Corrin,” he muttered. “Was that weird masked person you?”

“Who else would it be? A random stranger who just decided to break in, conveniently distracting the guards from all the missing people?”

“It just was unexpected. Why did you take his hat thing?”

“It’s a souvenir! How come you had his journal, anyways? Since when were you a petty thief, huh?”

Leo felt like he couldn’t reply to that, in case Corrin figured out that he had been stealing back his snacks and books from them since he was little. 

“I’ll look through it sometime today,” he said instead.

Corrin made a thoughtful face (which looked weird on them; Leo wasn’t used to them looking smart) and cracked open Iago’s grimoire resting on the table. Alarmed, Leo also grabbed the book in case there was some backlash from _cracking open a sorcerer’s spellbook_ since Corrin wasn’t particularly good at magic- but surprisingly nothing exploded. 

“Don’t just open things like they’re regular books!” Leo hissed, heart racing through his chest. “Are you insane!?”

“Aw, nothing would have happened.”

“ _How would you know that?!?_ ”

Corrin, surprisingly, apologized. “Sorry, I’ll be more careful next time,” they said, patting his head, and Leo abruptly felt like he was five again, crying since Corrin had climbed a tree and couldn’t get back down. 

Really, Corrin got into too much trouble. 

“Anyways, I found something else interesting in Iago’s office.”

“Can I see?” Corrin said..

Leo had a weird feeling about the strange, bone-white crystals but he held them out for Corrin to see anyways. He pulled it away again when Corrin nearly stuck their face in it.

“What’s wrong with you? Takumi was like that earlier too,” Leo wrapped it up again and held it tightly in his fist. After all, Corrin _was_ a veteran snack thief.

Corrin shook their head like a dog and scowled. “That thing is nostalgic, for some reason. It reminds me of Robin, really… and other people.”

“...Robin?” Leo asked dubiously. 

“It does! It’s weird though, it’s pretty faint… I don’t know…”

“It might be something from my dimension,” Takumi said. His eyes were also locked onto Leo’s hand. “It makes me hungry…”

Leo hoped that didn’t mean he was looking at him as a snack already, since he was still anemic. Confused, he looked back at Corrin, who was also fixated on the pouch, though much more intensely than Takumi.

“...Why are you affected, anyways? It doesn’t make sense. You’re human.”

Corrin full-body twitched. But they couldn’t not be human. Since he was little, they’ve been the obnoxious and annoying older sibling that Leo couldn’t help worrying about, and who he’d spent many a night helping revise (do) their homework and playing pranks on Xander... Maybe it was just a coincidence caused by Corrin’s general aura of crazy incidents.

“Have you been eating Felicia’s cooking again…? Seriously, take care of yourself more,” Leo said, frustrated. “You’re going to end up dead one of these days even if you do resemble a cockroach more than some cockroaches do.”

Corirn made a strange expression and huffed out a sigh. “Leo.. don’t worry so much. For now, let’s just get Takumi recharged, and we can discuss those things later. Perhaps through reading Iago’s research.”

Seeing his uncertain frown, Corrin patted him on the head again. 

“I’m sure you can figure it out. You’re still magically exhausted and shouldn’t even be walking around, for like a month or two. Take care of yourself before you worry yourself to death over me.” 

With that, they abruptly left for the bathroom, where they could hear the shower turn on.

“I think you’re underestimating them,” Takumi said, “Believe in them a little more. Aren’t you siblings? You have to let go, sometimes, and trust that they can take care of themselves.”

Leo wondered how Takumi was suddenly so wise. “...It sounds like you have siblings. Do you?”

Takumi paused, and a complicated look appeared on his face. For a second Leo worried that he had stepped too far again and that Takumi would withdraw from him too- but wasn’t that good? He was a demon, after all, no matter how often Leo seemed to forget.

“I do have siblings, though I can’t usually see all of them,” he eventually replied.

“They’re also demons, aren’t they?”

With a snort, he muttered, “Unfortunately. The Demon of Pride, Rage, (a certain other bastard), and the Demon of Flowers.”

“Bas-uh, flowers?” 

“Yeah, well, she’s not really suited to be a demon, but there’s no helping it. Her favorite thing to do is make flower crowns and heal some of the weaker ones ...”

“Ah. Reminds me of Elise. She’s too forgiving for Nohr, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be like without her.”

“Yeah. So don’t summon her to kill people or anything just because I’ve told you her title, or I’ll hunt you down and use you for target practice,” Takumi scowled, glaring at Leo.

“I wouldn’t,” Leo said softly, looking away again. Although he still didn’t trust himself, really. Who knows what he’d do- he currently was a son planning to murder his own father, after all. How could he not be morally corrupt?

“Are you done bonding or something?” Henry said from the floor. Takumi and Leo both flinched. Oh gods, was he there for all of that? “It’s time to go~! I can’t hang around here forever. Unless you want me to?”

“No, no, let’s go.” Leo said awkwardly.

Corrin, with exquisite timing, exited from the bathroom in their pajamas to flop onto their bed, wet hair and all, and promptly knocked out.

“...I’m a bit jealous of that ability,” Takumi muttered as they made their way out. “I could use another nap.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added more chptr to the expected chapter count oops  
> writing short things is hard XD
> 
> The title was so hard this time


	8. It's not ignorance if you are purposefully Not Thinking about it. Wait... that might be avoidance...shit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow i regret making the chapter titles something stupid. it takes EFFORT to make them sound like that ahahaha ive been debating the title for this chapter for way too long

It turned out that the dragon vein was outside city limits near the hills, the guard station at the entrance of a small valley between a heavily wooded area.

Needless to say, 10 seconds into the winding roads and Takumi had his head firmly planted in his hands with his eyes closed.

“I  _ hate _ cars  _ so much _ right now.” Leo heard him mutter, and Takumi lifted his head to squint at the blurred trees passing by before cradling his head again.

10 minutes later and Leo was also closing his eyes and trying to think happy thoughts as Henry swerved around a 180-degree turn at 50 mph.

By the time they finally got to the massive steel gate that was obnoxiously taller than the trees a small part of Leo was contemplating cursing Henry so that he could drive next time. The rest of him was just trying not to throw up. 

“Leo,” Takumi said as they stumbled out of the car. “I think I like my version of a car more than your version of a car.”

“First of all, your version of a car is a fish. More importantly, the only place you’ll go in  _ your _ car is the afterlife.”

“I can make regular cars send you to the afterlife too,” Henry said. “If you wanted to go there, you should have let me know!”

“...I’ll send  _ you _ to the afterlife,” Takumi muttered. “Aren’t trucks popular for that right now? Something about sending you into another universe..”

The guard squinted in confusion at their conversation and disheveled appearance before his eyes widened in recognition.

“...Prince Leo? What-what’re  _ you _ doing here...sir? We’re currently in lockdown right now-.”

“Yes, yes, well, I still need to inspect the dragon vein. Have you heard of the massive Faceless that appeared in Ylisse?”

“No, don’t hear much out on this post, but-”

“Hm. Well, the current investigation requires it. Would you bring us to the overseer of this place?”

The guard muttered about his superiors not telling him anything as he unlocked the gate.

“Nothing unusual happening here?” Leo asked.

“Not really, though some of the terrain here is more unstable than usual. The supervisor will probably give you an escort if you’re looking around, so you don't fall in any ditches or- well, yeah.”

That would be annoying. Both the ditches and the escort.

Eventually, the guard brought them to a small building. It was so incredibly small there couldn’t have been much purpose to the outpost other than making sure random people didn’t wander in.

They opened the door and immediately entered a tiny office with desks crammed into every available space. The only people there were an older man wearing the Nohrian military uniform and a young girl who was just a mass of black hair dressed in an oversized jacket… and nothing else. 

“What is it?” the man said irritably until his eyes met Leo’s and he jolted into a clumsy salute, knocking his chair over.

“A-ah, Prince Leo. What brings you here today?”

The girl turned to look at them, but her eyes were completely disinterested.

“Hello, Supervisor. Would you allow me to inspect the dragon vein? I’ve heard of some trouble recently, and it seems that no one has done anything about it yet. ”

“No trouble here! Well, more trouble than it used to be, but nothing to worry about! It’s all handled!”

“Then why are you so worried?” Leo asked, smiling. “Although, who’s this person you have in your office? She doesn’t seem like a guard.”

“Oh, she’s just someone we found wandering in the wilderness outside of here! No one to worry about!”

“Wandering…” he looked to the girl for an explanation.

“I got lost,” she said in a monotone. “While looking for something.”

“...she was standing in a lake a few miles away,” the guard said, a little baffled. “Naked.”

Leo kindly ignored the slightly insane child. “Well, in the meantime, we need an escort to the vein. Will that be you?”

“A-ah, yes.” The supervisor looked back uncertainly at the girl.

Leo sighed. “We’ll take her back to Ylisse after we’re done. I’m sure someone there will recognize her.”

“Oh! Prince Leo, I wouldn’t want to bother you-”

“It’s no bother. But I’d like to be taken to the area sometime today.”

The man was, a little too obviously, trying to hide something. Although he was also sucking up to Leo about the normal amount.

After grabbing a few things from his desk and quickly picking up his fallen chair, the supervisor quickly stumbled out of his room with Leo following. No one said anything when the girl followed them quietly so Leo ignored her.

It was a long hike, but not a very hard one, with the clouds heavily obscuring the sun and the flat, flat ground, at least until it broke up into jagged hills.

A blessing in disguise, since none of their group’s skin was suited to long sun exposure.

Considering how hidden away this place was, it was strange that Henry and Robin knew about this place.

As they walked, Leo began to feel distinctly off, as if the weight of something was staring at their little group the farther they walked.

Takumi was also looking up as if there was something above them. Leo couldn’t see anything but an overcast sky, washing everything in shadowless colors. 

A flock of crows burst into flight from a tall tree, and Leo flinched. 

He felt something on his shoulders and nearly jumped out of her skin. Turning around, he saw Takumi looking embarrassed with his hand hovering awkwardly in the air.

“Ah, um-” Takumi stumbled. “Sorry, you looked a little pale.”

“Do you  _ feel _ that?” Leo hissed.

“Yeah, probably?” Takumi muttered. “I feel dizzy…”

Now that he was looking at Takumi rather than at the forest around him (which he swore there were shadows moving around in the hazy tree lines), he noticed that Takumi was listing off to the side and looked somewhat confused.

Leo glanced at Henry, who was cheerily humming a tune and who seemed to be ignoring them. The girl that had followed them was  _ definitely _ ignoring them. Leo huffed and grabbed Takumi’s arm to drag it around his shoulders. This close, his ponytail nearly whacked him in the back of the head when Takumi turned his face away.

The supervisor walking ahead of them turned to make sure they were following and gave Leo a curious look.

Leo’s face twitched and he stared at the supervisor until he uncomfortably turned away. He really didn’t need rumors about him getting involved with a retainer (technically not a retainer, but he didn’t know that) popping up when Leo already felt like he couldn’t deal with the stress of his daily life.

They finally made it to a clearing surrounded by the woods when the supervisor stopped and turned his back on the clearing to wait for them to catch up. Leo’s eyes trailed over to a gouge in the earth, like some giant clawed creature tore up the earth and it never healed. 

He could understand why they were called dragon veins, when it felt like they were treading upon something terrible passing by, scarring the land. The area around the gouge in the earth was greyed and blackened as if it were burnt and chewed up, spit out only for the grasses and mosses to cling to the edges of the rocks. As he drew closer the magical saturation increased to the point he felt as if he’d been bathed in scalding water.

Their party had stopped a good meter behind him and Leo turned around expectantly.

“That...you shouldn’t approach any further, Prince Leo.” The supervisor said nervously. “From our research, certain people have strange reactions to it. Especially the Nohrian royalty.”

“How do you know how it affects me and my family?” Leo asked, “I don’t remember any of them coming here to verify that.”

The man started fidgeting. “We-well, it has strange effects in general...the Nohrian royalty just needs to be protected more! Since they’re important…”

...Riiiight.

Leo approached him so that he loomed over the supervisor.

“First, someone who shouldn’t be able to get here is just standing in your office. Then, you’re too nervous when I mention inspecting this place. And you know too much about the Nohrian family, considering the guard didn’t even know about what happened to Iago. Are you going to explain yourself?”

He paled and tried to back up, but Leo gripped his tie knot.

“What? If there’s nothing to worry about. Why be so nervous?” He smiled.

“Your friend fell asleep,” the girl interrupted. “Is that really alright?”

Both Leo and the supervisor turned around to see Takumi passed out, a foot away from the fissure. Henry was standing over him, attempting to poke him awake.

“Nyaha, I guess it affects him a bit differently?” Henry said unhelpfully. 

The problem was more that Leo didn’t realize it would affect Takumi at all. 

He slowly approached them, ignoring the protests behind him, and winced at the searing heat that seemed to radiate from the ground, more subdued than before. 

“You’re going to risk fainting too?” the girl sighed and picked her way across the rocks to walk with him. “Might as well see what all the ruckus is about.”

“Who, exactly, are you?” Leo said, trying not to sound too amused that a girl was acting so mature.

She side-eyed him. “Does it matter? I’m just a poor, lost woman.”

“You’re a young girl at best, and I’m giving you a ride home later. The least you could do is be polite.”

The gir-er,  _ the young woman _ looked one step away from eviscerating him when he called her a, uh,  _ premature _ woman. Leo calmly took note of that as he very much did not flee towards the dragon vein. He simply walked briskly, thank you very much.

He paused a foot away from where Takumi was, hand partially shielding his face from the prickling heat. 

Takumi would have looked peaceful or something, except how he would twitch every so often and grimace, and slide a bit farther down the slope. It didn’t look like a comfortable nap.

The unconscious demon began to slide off the harsh slope _. _ In alarm, Leo lunged to catch Takumi by the arm even as the rest of him partially slid off the ravine edge.

With his face directly over the dragon vein, it felt like the heat was crawling into his eyes, burning them even as he strained to pull Takumi up. He wasn’t heavy, but the lack of anything to brace himself against made him dig for larger rocks to wedge his fingers in.

Unexpectedly, Henry and the young woman grabbed his arm to help, although he didn’t know how much they could actually pull, considering both had the build of a mage. 

Wait, he was a mage too. Alright, Leo guessed mages were pretty well built then.

With a final heave, they somehow managed to pull Takumi up onto the rocky soil and all of them fell back in a pile, with the girl and Henry ending up squashed by Leo and Takumi.

“That was a close one! I don’t even know what would happen if you fell into one of those things!” Henry laughed cheerfully. “Oh! If the ravine actually closed like it was eating you, would that be messed up or what?”

Leo winced before dragging Takumi  _ slightly _ farther away from the crack in the earth, debating if he should attach a rope and retreat back to the less-painful zone. Especially since after all the adrenaline, he could now exquisitely feel the pain radiating from his bones.

He really wanted a long shower. And a nice nap. On a soft bed. It’s really too bad he couldn’t just nap with Takumi right here and now, on that nice(?) soft(?) dirt, since he was too busy trying not to show how much it hurt just standing there.

In the end, he positioned Takumi parallel to it and grabbed onto his hand, sitting as far away as possible while still holding on to him.

“...Do you know if or when he’ll wake up? Sitting here is a little uncomfortable.”

“Who knows?” Henry snickered. “Unfortunately, he didn’t end up being the type to go berserk and kill all of us.”

Now that Leo was looking for it, the trees around the clearing did look like they had massive blackened scratches and gouges. As if someone had gone feral with a sword. He felt like some of those looked familiar...yeah, better to just ignore them.

They sat there in silence, ignoring the freaked out supervisor who looked even closer to fainting. Leo’s palm was getting sweatier but he still held onto Takumi out of paranoia. When Takumi finally woke up, he blinked a few times before staring intensely at where he was holding Leo’s hand. Leo tried to drop it immediately, but the demon only gripped tighter and used it to drag them both up and back toward the trees, where he finally dropped it.

Takumi brushed off the dust from his clothes and finally looked at Leo. His usually intense red eyes had mellowed out, and his posture was far more relaxed than it had ever been. 

The demon looked at their group and smiled. It was a small smile, but it changed his face drastically to something much, much softer. Takumi didn’t look much like a demon, then, even with his reddish eyes.

“Ah… you’re feeling better, I take it?” Leo asked, a little uncertain, a little jittery.

Takumi’s smile widened to something almost giddy before he replied, “My headache’s finally gone. That was the best nap I had in decades.”

No wonder he was grumpy all the time if napping in the dirt in the middle of nowhere made him so pleased. 

That smile quickly turned into a frown once Takumi looked properly at Leo without sleep hazed eyes. He immediately felt a bit self-conscious, though there was no helping the fact that he was covered in soot and dirt. 

“Why do you look so tense? Did something happen while I was out?” Takumi asked, staring at Leo’s obviously rumpled clothes, confused.

“Oh, no, it was peaceful, but... “

“You almost turned into a pancake from falling off the cliff!” Henry added helpfully. “Or turned into rock taco meat? I dunno how narrow this thing gets, after all.”

“I take offense to that. I have better survival instincts than that.” Takumi said, “...Probably. By the way, why are there so many pebbles inside my clothing? Did one of you drag me across the ground or something?”

“Ah, yeah, I had to catch you before you fell,” Leo said. “Don’t worry about it. Just don’t nap so close to cliff edges next time, alright?”

Takumi looked at the crevice and frowned some more once he looked back at Leo’s face. There wasn’t anything dirty, was there? He wiped at his cheek to make sure, only to wince once the feel of his shirtsleeves on his skin sparked a prickle of pain. Before he could even check his sleeve for blood or something, he felt cool fingertips resting lightly on his jaw.

“It looks almost like you got burned,” Takumi said, pressing lightly enough that it was more soothing than painful. “That’s weird.”

The blood that rushed to his face just made his face hurt more.

“Is the Prince in an affair with his retainer?” the supervisor said, scandalized, whispering very loudly to the  _ young woman _ , who looked like she’d rather jump into the ravine than stand next to him.

“No?” Henry said. “It’s just a friendly bout of face slapping. You know.”

No one knew what Henry was actually talking about.

“Right, well, are you done inspecting the area?” the supervisor said. “If so, I’ll escort you out…”

“You never answered my questions,” Leo said, walking up to him. He wiped at his nose, still stinging. The man shrank back. “Whose secrets are you trying to hide? Corrin? The Ylisseans against Nohr?”

“That’s what happens when someone gets stuck guarding something important but ultimately boring,” the  _ young woman _ muttered. “I can’t believe they just let me follow you here…”

The man paled.

Something else dripped from Leo’s upper lip, and he looked down to see his sleeve smeared with blood and drops on the ground, barely visible in the dark ground.

The ground started trembling as if some giant were shaking the hills. The group stumbled toward the trees to get out of the clearing, where the ravine was widening and contracting as if gasping for breath.

Leo eyed the tree he was bracing against as it groaned with the earth, but it seemed that it would hold. After a few more seconds, the ground stopped moving, leaving a gouge in the earth several meters wider than before.

“Has it done that before?” Leo asked, still clutching at the tree.

“Sort of? The ground shakes a little sometimes, but not like that...and not with that result.”

The only rational conclusion was that it had something to do with his blood or Takumi’s nap (that supposedly gave him more energy, but he was planning to ask more about that later). Leo heavily debated if he should add more of his blood. He did, after all, still have a bloody nose. 

He stooped to wipe more blood onto the stones beneath him, and everyone around him stared in disbelief. 

“What are you doing?” Takumi hissed. “Are you crazy?”

“I wanted to see if it would happen again, for research…” Leo was definitely  _ not _ pouting. It was a valid reason, no matter that he didn’t have enough information to experiment properly.

Takumi clicked his tongue and muttered, “Sometimes I forget you’re  _ also _ a dark mage and thus are subject to dark-mage related idiocy.” The demon reached for his face and Leo flinched back, hitting the tree until he felt Takumi pinching the bridge of his nose. 

Right, he had a bloody nose.

“No self-preservation instincts whatsoever,” the demon said resentfully.

“I do too!” Leo nasally shot back.

“None at all,” Takumi concluded, still gripping his nose. Leo squinted at him through the pressure it caused on his sinuses.

“Can we leave before the ground gets embarrassed watching you two and eats us alive,” the  _ young woman _ said. “Although I’m sure at this point you would deserve it.”

Leo tried to detach his nose from Takumi’s grip, but he didn’t seem interested in letting go.

“Right. Let's go back down, then.” Takumi made his way to the start of the path, dragging Leo by the nose.

“Can you let go!?” Leo complained, holding Takumi’s arm in an attempt to keep his nose on his face.

The demon finally let go, stared at Leo’s face to make sure it wasn’t still bleeding (it felt more like his nose would just fall off at this point), and patted his head before starting on the way down.

Leaving everyone else to jog down the hill to keep up with him, since everyone else was either a mage that didn’t exercise that much or a supervisor who was incredibly confused about what just happened (and lucky that Leo didn’t care whether it was Ylisse he was hiding or just a wild Corrin).

“So were you actually napping?” Henry asked. “I kinda thought you were just pretending for the drama.”

“Why would I do that?” Takumi said. “If anyone would be dramatic in this group, it wouldn’t be me.”

“Wha-I better not be included in that,” Leo sputtered as he almost tripped over a rock.

“It’s the inherent drama of being an idiot, there’s no helping it.”

“You better  _ not _ be comparing me to a certain sibling of mine…!”

“I never said it was you, specifically.”

“You might as well have!”

The two people behind him were wearing similar looks of long-suffering.

“How on earth do you deal with those two?” the  _ young woman _ asked. “I’m beginning to dread being stuck in a car with them.”

Henry, who wouldn’t stop staring at the  _ young woman _ now that she was within grabbing distance, continued to stare at her like a creep. With that stupid smile of his.

“...Stop that before I curse your eyes onto the soles of your feet.”

“...Nya-, what did you do to yourself? Are you a masochist or something?”

The  _ young woman _ closed her mouth and stared at him just as much as he stared at her for the rest of the walk, like two cats stuck in an impasse. Leo couldn’t tell what the hell they were thinking, or how they weren’t tripping over anything (especially Henry, who was  _ walking backward _ just to keep up the staring contest. Weird bastard).

Finally, at the bottom of the stupidly steep hill, Leo turned to the  _ young woman _ and tried to project as much Princely-authority(?) as he could.

“It’s been so long, and you have yet to tell us your name,” he said.

The  _ young woman _ frowned 

“You don’t even have to give me a real name,” Leo said dryly. “But referring to you as a gi-  _ young woman _ all the time is bothersome.”

“Nyx.”

Or, literally, ‘Night’. She could have chosen a better alias but considering her choice of clothing (blue-black, though 'choice' may be a bit...incorrect) he should have expected it.

“Alright, Nyx. Why were you out here standing in the middle of a pond?”

She smiled like she would like nothing more than to crush his face against a jagged rock. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Ok, maybe asking her anything was a bad idea.

What was with people and obvious attempts to evade his questions? They could at least try to lie or misdirect him in a  _ convincing _ way. At least that way, he didn’t get the urge to smash his head on a wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can thank Zalaphinia for the taco-meat pun. (Takumi)  
> I didn't even see it when I wrote it.  
> Feel free to curse her or praise her   
> I cried on the inside. 
> 
> Tho It's hard not to laugh when we beta because im embarassed and the situations are swinging between plot and crack at this point
> 
> Anyways thanks for reading for this long : p ~~  
> Hopefully it made someone laugh ^^  
> (excluding my beta since she improves the stupid quality 10/10)


	9. There's a lot of coffee in this chapter

After a few days of rest, they met with Robin at an extremely normal-looking residential house complete with planter boxes filled with flowers and cheery terracotta-colored walls on the edges of the old city. It was a house more suited for a grandma, but Leo confirmed it was not the wrong address when Robin opened the door. Unless Robin just stole the house from some grandma?

When they entered, the place was littered with books stacked on the coffee table and crammed onto every available surface that was not the ground. Such as on top of some of the doorways, for some reason. Leo wasn’t sure Robin could even reach those. (Leo couldn’t reach them) 

Corrin was looking around as if it was fascinating even though Leo knew they had seen his own apartment before, with its own haphazard stacks of books and chess boards mid-game that they always teased him for whenever they visited. They couldn’t say anything though- Corrin’s house was filled with so many swords and weird costumes that guests always had a chance of getting gutted by their decorations.

Leo wondered if Robin would play chess with him later, though it looked like he had an ongoing match already. None of his siblings really had the patience to play with him since they preferred physical exercise. Or as he called it, ‘beating people up’.

Robin set them up at the dining table with coffee, which Leo tried not to inhale on sight. Even though he had slept in, he still felt groggy and sluggish. Takumi just looked at his cup suspiciously, sniffing at it like some sort of dog.

“What’s this?” Takumi muttered, tilting it around. Robin hadn’t added milk or sugar so the liquid was nearly black and still steaming.

“It’s bean water,” Corrin said unhelpfully, dumping a large amount of sugar and milk into it and taking a massive gulp. The demon looked faintly disgusted.

“Bean water?” he said. “This doesn’t look like any bean water I’ve seen.”

“You’ve seen other types of...bean water?” Leo asked.

“Red bean, green bean, not a brown bean. And it’s soup, not water.” He glared at Corrin, and then reluctantly copied them by adding a ton of sugar to it before taking a sip.

“...It’s a little bitter…” he said, but he drank some more.

“Aww, is the baby demon learning what coffee is?” Corrin cooed, and Takumi looked like he was seriously contemplating throwing the cup at them.

Leo also took a drink and Takumi looked at him in concern.

“You didn’t add any sugar.”

Leo looked him dead in the eye and took a larger sip. Takumi frowned and then stuck his hand out for his cup, looking like he wanted to try it. After a tentative drink, he carefully put it back down and distinctly looked like he was judging Leo for his poor life choices.

Well, it's not like Robin’s coffee was bad. After a certain point in his life, Leo stopped caring about the taste of coffee but it didn’t even need sugar to be pleasant. High praise.

Robin finally sat down and flipped a notepad open.

“I talked to Iago some more.”

“Talked…?” Corrin said, likely interested in whatever nefarious ways Robin managed to extract information when Corrin’s brute force hadn’t done anything.

Robin just smiled and didn’t elaborate. “It turns out that all these Faceless that were out on a killing spree really were part of Iago’s experiment, although it was the king that permitted him to do so in a public space.”

“I was told that the Ylisseans were the ones that started rioting and attacking the politicians,” Leo said. “But if he told Iago to do that, I’m not surprised you retaliated…”

With a sigh, Robin crossed his arms. “The Ylissean royalty did not agree to any form of retaliation. The faction that wants to just roll over is scared of the repercussions and is unwilling to do anything even when it gets this bad. Although we’ve dragged them into this mess by association by this point.”

“You seem to have quite a firm grasp of the politics here,” Leo noted, and Robin gave him a grin that was too similar to Henry’s for comfort.

“I’m the royal advisor, although I’m not acting as one in this case. I would hope I had an opinion.”

Leo immediately started coughing on his coffee and Corrin managed to fall off their chair from their knee jerk flinch.

“You’re the what.” Corrin sputtered from the floor. “You’re Ylisse’s version of Iago? How come I’ve never seen you before-”

“Don’t put it that way,” Robin looked exasperated. “Besides, I revealed that as a show of faith. Even though that’s technically public knowledge.”

“They never show pictures of your face. And besides, what pictures they do have of you are really far away… to be honest, I thought you were supposed to be an old man,” Corrin muttered. “Wait, so who’s Chrom is then? Your subordinate?”

Robin did his best to hold back a laugh. “Sure, let’s go with that,” he said, silently snickering.

Someone knocked on the door, and Robin frowned but still stood up to receive them.

In walked the young woman, Nyx, who Leo had dropped off in the town square after she’d refused to tell them a house to bring her to. And who had acquired clothing from somewhere that was still far too big for her.

“Oh! Nyx!” Corrin said because of course, Corrin knew some random young woman Leo had met in the middle of nowhere. “So you found this place alright?”

Nyx gave Corrin a judgemental blank face. “Never write down the instructions on how to get somewhere ever again.”

“Awww, you’d rather me just tell them to you.”

Nyx’s blank face actually twisted in minor frustration.

“Turn left when you see a black cat is not-”

“Wait, why are you here?” Leo said. “And why are you willingly associating with Corrin of all people?”

“Corrin is an…acquaintance.” She said as if the words pained her. “And asked me to come because of a rock.”

“A rock? And you still came?” Robin said. Judging by Nyx’s expression, he wasn’t the only one confused.

She dragged her feet around the table to Corrin’s side and sat down. Looking at their cups of coffee with a twitch in her eyebrow, she flinched when Corrin set down another cup for her and added enough sugar to render a small child comatose into it.

“...Thank you.”

Leo stared at Corrin. “What do you mean, rock?”

Corrin winced. “The thing... You take out and then...? I don’t know if it’s a rock or not, alright? I don’t really remember what it is.”

That was strange since Corrin had stared straight at it.

So he pulled out the now-familiar velvet pouch, revealing the bone-white crystals. Now that he looked at it, it was similar to the rocks in the depth of the vein that he saw when he was holding onto Takumi...

Robin’s eyes, he suddenly noticed, could get to an alarmingly pure red-violet staring at the shards as if they had killed his mother. Not that Takumi and Corrin were acting much better.

Closing his eyes and tilting his face away from it, Robin gritted, “Put that away for now, if you please.”

Leo quickly shoved it back into the pouch and pocketed it. It was kind of funny to see them act so weird but it was also insanely creepy to have three sets of red eyes staring straight at him as if he was a piece of meat.

After a few breaths, Robin seemed to calm down, the unnaturalness fading from his eyes. He sighed, “Those look familiar.”

“I saw them in the vein, I think.”

Robin frowned. “I haven’t seen the inside of the vein, because it would be stupid to get that close, but I’ve seen it elsewhere. In the capital. I can’t really remember… hm...”

Honestly, the material (whatever it was) was indistinct enough that if it were painted, Leo wouldn’t know if the entire castle was made of it except Corrin’s reaction to it. Although, now that he was thinking about it...

“Corrin,” he said slowly once Corrin shook themselves out of it and had taken a large gulp of coffee, ”Do you remember that time you had angered Father?”

“I do that too much to remember a specific instance, you know.” Corrin had the gall to look smug about it.

“No, I think it was the time when you and Azura got caught eavesdropping or - I don’t really know what you did, since you refused to tell me after. But I recall hearing that he hit you with his polearm and when you tried to get up, he did it again but you were acting quite strange.”

Corrin frowned, tapping their mouth and trying to remember. Leo supposed it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, but that particular time, due to the urgency of the servant who had told him of the situation Leo had gone to ‘pick them up’ to stop Father from knocking them around even longer.

Corrin had a strange glazed look in their eyes, and wouldn’t stop staring at Garon’s hand- or he supposed, the polearm in his hand, flecked with their blood. He had thought that they just had a concussion or something, but maybe it had more to do with the weapon? Corrin was notoriously sturdy, after all. Blunt force trauma was something they usually brushed off as if nothing had happened.

Corrin murmured, “Yeah… it was similar. I don’t know if it's the same thing, though. I don’t really remember...I really did take too many hits to the head that time. I don’t usually have this much trouble remembering how I pissed him off, since Azura and I do it as a hobby. Although, fortunately, she never gets in as much trouble.”

Robin was looking mildly alarmed but also amused at these revelations. To be fair, anyone outside the family would probably react like that, right?

“What is it?” Leo muttered curiously. “I can’t even experiment with the stone with all you people around.”

“It could be something from the demonic world,” Nyx said, “Since that grey-haired man with you is a demon, correct?”

“But Corrin and Robin aren’t demons, so why would it have any effect on them?” Leo said, “And why does it have any effect at all here if it’s something from Takumi’s home dimension?”

“Um,” Corrin said. “She’s probably right, though? Maybe...”

Robin gave Corrin a weird look. “Probably…?”

“How would you know?”

Corrin, Robin, and Takumi all stared at Leo again and then at each other as if they didn’t know what to do. It was Takumi that finally decided to break the silence even though he had been mostly just drinking the coffee.

“Corrin, you still haven’t told your family after how long?”

Corrin drooped and refused to look up from their toes. “It’s hard!! It’s weird!! What, am I supposed to go up to my brother and just be like ‘oh yeah, by the way, I’m actually a demon!! Surprise!! Like, what is a good time for that? Give me a break!”

At Leo’s blank stare, they panicked.

“Um, yeah, Leo, I would have told you guys! Eventually! You guys really are family to me, alright, even though Takumi is technically family too, but that’s not the point! I’m not trying to secretly kill you! Or anyone else! Except Garon, but that’s a given, okay?”

“...I see. That does explain a lot,” Leo said, thinking back on all the strange occurrences that happened with Corrin around. He might have gotten too used to Corrin “accidentally” picking up entire trees and “secretly” putting them back down. “You know you’ll have to tell the rest of our siblings when we get back?” 

Corrin winced and clasped their hands together. “Can we do it later?! It’s not important right now, right?

“If you don’t tell her, I’ll tell her.”

“They’re going to kill me.” Corrin groaned and banged their head onto the table like the drama queen they were.

“Oh no, what a tragedy,” Leo said, “You would be the first royalty to die from friendly breast asphyxiation as Camilla smothers you with her love. I can see the headlines now, Father would be scandalized.”

“You’re taking it rather well,” Robin said. “Considering that also reveals that I have some relation to demons.”

Leo gestured to Takumi, who glared at his hands suspiciously.

“I know a demon now, and he’s just an idiot with questionable tastes in the shows he enjoys. It’s fine, right? As long as you don’t cause trouble.”

He ducked as Takumi angrily threw his cup of coffee at him. It hit Corrin and immediately resulted in one-sided screeching with Takumi sulking in his seat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha it's been a while anyways I blame the toes on my beta <3 <3
> 
> Robin is still kind of a dragon which is why he reacts like that since dragon veins are from when the first dragon-demon thing tore out of the other dimension into the human one.
> 
> And the demon-thing isn't really a hell type of demon, it's more of a 'magical being from a different dimension that exists on contracts and somewhat based on unmoral type behavior bc the humans labeled them like that'


End file.
